Occupation France

Under Occupation is based on a true story. After the German victory in 1939, thousands of Poles were sent to Germany as slave labourers. From Germany, the Poles found ways to transmit intelligence back to the British in London. Under Occupation takes place in occupied Paris in 1942, with scenes in Germany and Romania. The hero of the book is Paul Ricard, a French writer of genre - spy and detective - novels.

In 1941, Irène Némirovsky sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through, not in terms of battles and politicians, but by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. She did not live to see her ambition fulfilled, or to know that 65 years later, Suite Française would be published for the first time, and hailed as a masterpiece.