"A masterpiece ... ripped from oblivion."
Le Monde on Irène Némirovsky's Suite Francaise

Irène Némirovsky's Suite Francaise was the literary sensation of 2006. The Kiev-born exile found fame with a string of novels, novellas and plays in 1930s Paris, gaining overnight literary celebrity on a par with Colette. Refused French citizenship on the eve of World War II, she was deported from Vichy France to Auschwitz in 1942, where she died a stateless Jew, aged 39.

Her long lost masterpiece lay undiscovered for the next 50 years, finally unearthed by her daughter and published to universal acclaim in 2004. The rest is history.

Carmen Callil, the Australian-born founder of Virago Press, former publisher of Chatto & Windus, and acclaimed author of last year's publishing triumph Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland is a Némirovsky authority.

As a transatlantic debate about alleged collaboration, self-denial and even charges of anti-Semitism threatens to tarnish Némirovsky's hallowed reputation, Callil discusses, debates and reappraises this 20th-century literary icon.