The Wine of Solitude (Vintage International) - Softcover

Praise for The Wine of Solitude

"A precocity and acuity of perception shine through."
--The New Yorker

"Wonderfully atmospheric . . . . Némirovsky evokes the places of her childhood with a sensuous clarity that shows how much she learned from Tolstoy and Proust. . . . A captivating and searingly honest portrait of the artist as a young woman."
--The Guardian (London)

"Strangely haunting . . . . Profound, exquisitely wrought. . . . A pitch-perfect evocation of adult duplicity."
--The Independent (London)

"Fiercely brave. . . . [Here is] the birth of a writer, shaped by war and revolution, told with the devastating cynicism of a young woman in a corrupt and greedy social world, where mothers openly flaunt their lovers and children are humored and ignored. . . . The characters are multidimensional."
--Shelf Awareness

"Breathtaking. . . . Némirovsky's powers of social observation, [her] implacable eye for the nuances of human conduct . . . make The Wine of Solitude so memorable."
--The Financial Times

Praise for Irène Némirovsky:

"Extraordinary. . . . Némirovsky achieve[s] her penetrating insights with Flaubertian objectivity."
--The Washington Post Book World

"Stunning. . . . [Némirovsky] wrote, for all to read at last, some of the greatest, most humane and inclusive fiction that conflict has produced."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Némirovsky's scope is like that of Tolstoy: She sees the fullness of humanity and its tenuous arrangements and manages to put them together with a tone that is affectionate, patient, and relentlessly honest."
--O: The Oprah Magazine

Introspective and poignant, The Wine of Solitude is the most autobiographical of all of the novels from the celebrated author ofSuite Française.

Beginning in a fictionalized Kiev, The Wine of Solitude follows the Karol family through the Great War and the Russian Revolution, as the young Hélène grows from a dreamy, unhappy child into a strongwilled young woman. From the hot Kiev summers to the cruel winters of St Petersburg and eventually to springtime in Paris, the would-be writer Hélène blossoms, despite her mother’s neglect, into a clear-eyed observer of the life around her. Here is a powerful tale of disillusionment — the story of an upbringing that produces a young woman as hard as a diamond, prepared to wreak a shattering revenge on her mother.

A Vintage Paperback Original