Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918, her family fled the Russian Revolution for France, where she became a bestselling novelist. Prevented from publishing when the Germans occupied France in 1940, she moved with her husband and two small daughters from Paris to the safety of the small village of Issy-l 'Evêque (in German-occupied territory). It was here that Irène began writing Suite Française. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.