Customer Reviews
Nemirovsky's first novel is brilliant debut - By: Andres C. Salama, 19 Aug 2008 
Irene Nemirovsky's brilliant first book (originallly published in France in 1929) deals with the eponymous businessman, a ruthless man in his late sixties who has amassed an enormous wealth, but who increasingly faces a brutal reversal of fortune. Hated by his wife & daughter (who only expect money from him), with a heart condition that augurs him just a few months of life, his business deals collapsing, he looks at his life & sees that he has never loved anyone, except a daughter that may not be reallly his. Reportedly autobiographical (Nemirovsky was the estranged daughter of an exiled Russian Jewish banker; she could be the inspiration for Golder's daughter Joyce), what is a bit disturbing about the book is how Golder's greed & the materialism of his wife & daughter are seen as an exclusively Jewish trait; to her defence, Nemirovsky wrote this before Hitler's rise to power, but in in a post-Holocaust world, this gives the book a strange feeling as if it was written by a very talented antisemite (paradoxicallly, Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz).
Fantastic - A modern classic - By: Sofia, 12 Apr 2008 Right from the first page, when David Golder refuses to help his business partner out of financial difficulties, this is a page-turner. An old-school personal fable, a morality tale about the perils of personal fortune & narcissism, Nemirovsky's short work is reminiscent of Dickens, Balzac & Tolstoy, yet it is a resolutely modern tale of cut-throat financial speculation. It should be compulsory reading for anyone seeking or more especiallly guarding a fortune!
David Golder & his family & associates are deeply unattractive people & there appears to be much anti-semitic stereotyping deployed here, although it is fair to say that Nemirovsky both knew this world from her upbringing & marriage & also wrote this before the Nazi rise to power in neighbouring Germany. That aside, this is a fantastic novel. David Golder is a thoroughly believable & believably flawed individual; for alll his faults, I felt sorry for him & wanted to know how things would pan out. I had trouble putting this down, it's a real classic, in an old-school way, but a real gem to read.
