I had long wanted to read Irène Némirovsky (Kiev, 1903 - Auschwitz, 1942). As I studied the work of a contemporary French playwright of his, in the context of the occupied Paris at the time, I was recommended to read Dantzaldia. Next to the French suite, which is Némirovsky's best-known novel. Since then I have been curious about this Ukrainian writer with French education. However, neither have been read by the Virgen de la Vuelta de Joxe Antonio Sarasola, published by Alberdania. And from the collection of stories Other stories, I've started to get to know this woman's literary work. And the truth is, I don't know if my curiosity has been a little frustrated. Five of the twelve stories that

make up the book were published in journals of the time, and the last of them, Birjinak (1942), has been the winner of the space to crown the title of this collection. The remaining reports were kept in the manuscript until its publication in 2009. The

Virgins, no doubt, is the champion of the famine and Zine mintzatua (1935) is the second place. It includes the writer’s conception of real life and destiny that is based on total grief and misfortunes; “we want to live with all our forces or we want peace” (170. pag. ), will say one of the women protagonists of the story. The injured and corrupted characters indicate that it is not useful to try to avoid misfortune, it is better to look in the eyes and face. A well-cooked life is not a real life.

I've had the opportunity to experience various sensations from one story to another. Some twenty pages, some ten pages or five pages, but it has not been a matter of length of stories. Throughout the reading of the book, I've noticed a lot of ups and downs, and the feeling that invades me is that of boredom. In a novel, the boredom between ten pages doesn't have to make us destroy the whole novel, but it does in the case of stories. This is what happened to me with stories like Mamuak, The Unknown and Magic, I have read them without any appeal. The stories of Némirovsky are based on personal experiences, but they are endowed with a broad ontological universal transcendence. In this sense, it cannot be denied depth in terms of content. However, although the reflection on the fabric of life with which we weave our destiny is not too heavy, reading twelve stories that carry the same burden is too heavy. Perhaps it is the right way to start from the novel, and if so, I recommend it to you.