Twenty Minutes - Monsieur Rose

In Monsieur Rose by Irène Némirovsky a well heeled Parisian is forced to flee and leave his old life behind as chaos and panic gather pace at the onset of the second world war. Monsieur Rose is selected from Irène Némirovsky's collection Dimanche and Other Stories which is the first collection of her short stories to appear in English. Irène Némirovsky is best known for her celebrated novel, Suite Française which was first published, posthumously, in French in 2004. She was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became an established novelist. When the Germans occupied France during WWII she was prevented from publishing her work. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. Read by David Horovitch Translated by Bridget Patterson. Abridged and produced by Elizabeth Allard.