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

Paris.
    Famine in Ukraine and elsewhere in USSR (to 1934), claiming some five million lives, though Soviet grain continues to be dumped on world markets.
    Hitler becomes German Chancellor: proclaims Third Reich; opposition parties banned. Germany leaves the League of Nations. Daladier—another Radical—becomes French prime minister. Growth of Fascist movement in France. Second Five-Year Plan in USSR. Jean Renoir’s film
of Madame Bovary.
    Stavisky Affair: financial scandal following the suicide of Russian emigre embezzler, Alexandre Stavisky, in which leading Radicals are implicated. A demonstration by far-right groups turns into a battle with police in which 15 people are killed and 1500 injured (February 6). Anti-Fascist general strike. Daladier resigns in favor of a National Union cabinet under Doumerge. King Alexander of Yugoslavia is assssinated in Marseilles
.
Jean Vigo:
L’Atalante.
Hitler becomes German Fuhrer. German rearmament commences. Stalin places national security under the soon-to-be notorious NKVD. Murder of Kirov, a protege and potential rival of Stalin (December) prompts the start of the Great Terror the following year. Premiership of Laval, whose unpopular attempts to combat the Depression lead to his downfall in 1936. Left-wing parties unite to form the Front Populaire. Mussolini invades Abyssinia. Nuremberg Laws in Germany debar Jews from public life. French-Soviet mutual assistance pact.
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1936
Jezabel,
Albin Michel, a cruel portrait of her mother. One of her short stories, “Fraternite” (Brotherhood), is refused by
La Revue des Deux Mondes
on the grounds that it is anti-Semitic, although what Irene wanted to show was the “unassimilable nature” of emigrant Jews.
Louise Weiss:
Deliverance.
Celine:
Mort a credit.
Bernanos:
Journal d’un cure de campagne.
Sartre:
L’Imagination.
Maritain:
Humanisme integral.
J.-R. Bloch:
Naissance d’une culture.
1937
Her second daughter, Elisabeth Epstein, born. Begins to write
Deux
(Both).
Breton:
L’Amour fou.
Bernanos:
Nouvelle Histoire de
Mouchette.
Anouilh:
Le Voyageur sans bagage.
Camus:
L’Envers et l’endroit.
Drieu la Rochelle:
Reveuse bourgeoisie.
Sartre:
La Transcendance de l’ego.
Maurois:
Histoire d’Angleterre.
1938
La Proie
(The Prayer), Albin Michel. Irene meets the priest Roger Brechard, a model for abbe Philippe Pericand in
Suite francaise.
First stay in Issy-l’Eveque, a village in Burgundy. Her memories of 1917 are published in
Le Figaro
(“Naissance d’une revolution,” June 4). She thinks of writing a novel based on the life of Leon Blum, Leon Trotsky or Alexandre Stavisky. Irene and Michel apply for French citizenship (November).
Sartre:
La Nausee.
Chardonne:
Le Bonheur de Barbezieux.
Queneau:
Les Enfants du Limon.
Albert Cohen:
Mangeclous.
Nabokov:
The Gift.
1939
Still legally stateless, the family converts to Catholicism (February 2). Michel nearly dies from mumps and septicemia. Irene lectures on women writers on Radio Paris.
Deux
(Both) is published by Albin Michel
.
Though asked to re-produce documents already submitted (April), the Epsteins never receive an answer to their naturalization request. Final holiday in Hendaye, near the Spanish border (August). Irene sends the children to stay
Sartre:
Le Mur.
Saint-Exupery:
Terre des hommes.
Drieu la Rochelle:
Gilles.
Brasillach:
Les Sept Couleurs.
Henry Bernstein:
Elvire.
Giraudoux:
Ondine.
Nathalie Sarraute:
Tropismes.
Ana?s Nin:
Un Hiver d’artifice.
Aldanov:
The Fifth Seal.
Joyce:
Finnegans Wake.
    HISTORICAL EVENTS
    General election in spring bitterly contested. The Front Populaire win a narrow majority of the vote but a large majority of seats. Communists refuse to participate in government. Leon Blum becomes first Socialist prime minister— an intellectual and the first French premier of Jewish origin. Blum persuades employers to increase wages, ending wave of strikes, and embarks on program of contraversial social reform. Spanish