Irene Nemirovsky

I've decided that one person I'd name in response to the "If You Could Invite Eight Famous People to Dinner" question would be Irene Nemirovsky, the author of Suite Francaise.

Suite Francaise is the first two parts of a five-part novel that Nemirovsky planned while writing in Paris. A successful author and a Jew, she was arrested in 1942 and murdered at Auschwitz. Her book - the surviving two parts stand alone - is an unusual account of the fall of France in 1940 and then life in a German-occupied village. Among other things, it is an example of the enormous talent that was lost during the Holocaust.

The book manuscript was hidden for years and was published in the United States in 2006.

Extraordinary.