Product Description

Translated by Sandra Smith, with an introduction by Patrick
Marnham.

In 1929, 26-year-old Irène Némirovsky shot to fame in France with the
publication of her first novel David Golder. At the time, only the most
prescient would have predicted the events that led to her extraordinary
final novel Suite Française and her death at Auschwitz. Yet the clues are
there in this astonishingly mature story of an elderly Jewish businessman
who has sold his soul.

Golder is a superb creation. Born into poverty on the Black Sea, he has
clawed his way to fabulous wealth by speculating on gold and oil. When the
novel opens, he is at work in his magnificent Parisian apartment while his
wife and beloved daughter, Joy, spend his money at their villa in Biarritz.
But Golder's security is fragile. For years he has defended his business
interests from cut-throat competitors. Now his health is beginning to show
the strain. As his body betrays him, so too do his wife and child, leaving
him to decide which to pursue: revenge or altruism?

Available for the first time since 1930, David Golder is a page-turningly
chilling and brilliant portrait of the frenzied capitalism of the 1920s and
a universal parable about the mirage of wealth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11424 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Sunday Telegraph, rev'd by George Walden
`striking first work, sensitively translated by Sandra Smith'

Evening Standard
`This is a writer of rare power, make no mistake'.

Spectator
`competent but surprisingly harsh novel'

Customer Reviews

Fantastic - A modern classic
Right from the first page, when David Golder refuses to help his business partner out of financial difficulties, this is a page-turner. An old-school personal fable, a morality tale about the perils of personal fortune and narcissism, Nemirovsky's short work is reminiscent of Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy, yet it is a resolutely modern tale of cut-throat financial speculation. It should be compulsory reading for anyone seeking or more especially guarding a fortune!

David Golder and his family and associates are deeply unattractive people and there appears to be much anti-semitic stereotyping deployed here, although it is fair to say that Nemirovsky both knew this world from her upbringing and marriage and also wrote this before the Nazi rise to power in neighbouring Germany. That aside, this is a fantastic novel. David Golder is a thoroughly believable and believably flawed individual; for all his faults, I felt sorry for him and wanted to know how things would pan out. I had trouble putting this down, it's a real classic, in an old-school way, but a real gem to read.