Read David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) for Free Online

Civil War. Blum’s alliance with the Radicals obliges him to opt for non-intervention though Spain has the only other Popular Front government in Europe. Hitler marches into demilitarized Rhineland. Three great Moscow show trials of leading Bolsheviks (to 1938). Unemployment in France remains high. Blum’s cabinet falls over his efforts to improve exchange controls (June). Exposition universelle in Paris. Stalin liquidates millions—many of them Communisty Party members, mainly from educated and managerial classes and from the armed forces (to 1938). German air attack on Basque town of Guernica. Picasso:
Guernica.
Jean Renoir directs
Lagrande illusion.
Chevalier:
Paris en joie
(revue).
    Disintegration of the Front Populaire. France returns to the usual center coalitions, with Socialists in opposition. Daladier becomes prime minister. His finance minister Reynaud suspends most of Blum’s reforms. Hitler’s troops enter Austria and part of Czechoslovakia. Munich Agreement: Britain and France appease Hitler. Kristallnacht—Nazis terrorize Jewish community (November 10). Third Five-Year Plan in USSR. Chagall:
La Crucifixion blanche.
    Hitler occupies the rest of Czechoslovakia (March). Madrid’s surrender to General Franco ends Spanish Civil War (March). “Pact of Steel” between Italy and Germany (May). France and Britain press USSR to oppose Hitler but Nazi-Soviet pact signed (August). Germans invade Poland. France and Britain declare war on Germany (September 3). Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland and Finland. Jean Renoir directs
La Regle du jeu.
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
with their nurse’s family in Issy-Eveque on the outbreak of war. She embarks on a life of Chekhov
(La Vie de Tchekhov).
1940
Les Chiens et les loups
(Dogs and Wolves), Albin Michel.
Les Echelles du Levant
(The Ports of Call of the Levant) is serialized in
Gringoire
(from May 18). Watching the exodus from Paris as the Germans advance, and recalling
The Rains Came
by Louis Bromfield (19”7), Irene conceives the idea of a choral novel,”
Tempete en juin
(Storm in June), the first novel of her
Suite franc aise.
Visits the children in Issy-l’Eveque (May) and decides to stay there, joined by Michel in June. Issy-l’Eveque is occupied by the Germans on June 18. First “Law on the Status Ofjews” (October): Fayard reneges on contract to serialize her new novel,
Jeunes et vieux
(Young and Elderly) in his weekly,
Candide.
Michel is fired from the Banque du Nord.
Sartre:
L’Imaginaire.
Cocteau:
Le Bel Indifferent.
Maritain:
De la justice politique.
Troyat:
Dostoevsky.
Akhmatova:
From Six Books.
Koestler:
Darkness at Noon.
Hemingway:
For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Greene:
The Power and the Glory.
1941
Publishes stories under various pseudonyms in
Gringoire,
Carbuccia, though a collaborator, being sympathetic to her situation. In April
Gringoire
begins serializing
Les Biens de ce monde
(The Goods of this World), a new title for
Jeunes et vieux.
Most of her so-called friends in the literary world and previous publishers turn aside from her. Albin Michel, however, offers financial and moral suport. Second “Law on the Status Ofjews” (June). The German soldiers leave Issy-Eveque. Irene begins to write
Dolce
(July)—the second novel of
Suite francaise.
Aragon:
Le Creve-coeur.
Mauriac:
Le Pharisienne.
Blanchot:
Thomas l’obscur.
Simone Weil starts writing the Cahiers which form the basis of
La Pesanteur et la Grace.
Nabokov:
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
Brecht:
Mother Courage.
    HISTORICAL EVENTS
    Hitler’s armies advance rapidly through the Netherlands and Belgium (May), breaking French defensive line near Sedan and entering Paris on June 14. Government leaves Paris (June 10) for Tours, then Bordeaux. Petain, right-winger who favors surrender, gains control of cabinet. From London De Gaulle appeals to French patriots to continue the struggle. Armistice signed (June 22). France divided into an occupied zone (north and west coast) and an