Lecture will discuss Jewish identity in the life and work of Irène Némirovsky (1903-1942), a Russian Jewish immigrant to France who achieved a brilliant career as a novelist during the 1930s but was deported as a “foreign Jew” in 1942 and died in Auschwitz. Némirovsky’s portrayals of Jewish characters in her fiction are controversial, often considered anti-semitic. Suleiman argues instead that her Jewish characters exemplify the dilemmas and contradictions of Jewish existence in the 20th century, in Europe and beyond.

SUSAN SULEIMAN
(Harvard)

Sponsored by the
UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies
Cosponsored by the
UCLA Department of French and Francophones Studies
UCLA Department of Comparative Literature