Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (2006)

This posthumous masterpiece of Irène Némirovsky, the Russian born writer (who became well known French writer in spite of not being a "native" speaker) will spellbound you. It is in the best tradition of the big novels in the 19^th and first half of the 20^th century. Reading the first two pages will place you into Paris during the air raids with the German troops rapidly approaching. And the rest of the pages will paint a bleak (but still with glimmers of hope) picture of mostly the worst, but sometimes the best coming out of people as the society's fabric unravels. We ought to be thankful to not living through those times and needing to make those choices. Planned to be a set of five books (only two of the books completed in handwriting before she was hauled away into Auschwitz to die, and those notebooks were transcribed by her by luck surviving daughter to be published as this book), the "Storm in June" and "Dolce" are indeed the first two parts of an unfinished symphony.