The Mirador

A lively, elegantly written portrait of a woman who lived and wrote through tumultous times. TLS ‘An unnervingly enlightening and revealing study of Irene Nemirovsky written as the imagined autobiography she never wrote, by a stranger who was also her daughter.’ Irish Times

Lisabeth Gille (1937-1996) was born in Paris, the daughter of Michel Epstein, a banker, and of the novelist Ir ne Nemirovsky. In 1942, both parents were deported to Auschwitz, where they died, but Gille and her older sister, Denise, lived out the duration of World War II in hiding. Gille worked for many years as an editor and translator, especially of science fiction, and she was over fifty when her first book, The Mirador, appeared and was immediately recognized as a major achievement. Before her death she also published Le Crabe sur la banquette arri re (The Crab in the Backseat), a mordantly funny examination of people’s responses to her battle with cancer, and a short novel that reflects her and her sister’s life in the years after their parents’ disappearance, Un paysage de cendres, translated into English as Shadows of a Childhood.

Marina Harss is a translator and dance writer living in New York City. Her recent translations include Mariolina Venezia’s Been Here a Thousand Years, Alberto Moravia’s Conjugal Love, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Stories from the City of God, and Dino Buzzati’s Poem Strip.

Rene de Ceccatty is a French novelist, playwright, and critic. His most recent book is a study of Giacomo Leopardi.

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