The Wine of Solitude Irene Nemirovsky trs Sandra Smith (Chatto and Windus, £14.99) Irene Nemirovsky (1903-42) was a Russian-French novelist who died in the Holocaust; her work was almost forgotten for many years but is now being retrieved and translated.

This novel, now available in English for the first time, is strongly autobiographical. Her mother, who survived her, was in her opinion a dreadful woman who flaunted the men in her life and had no interest in her only child.

Here she tells the story of a daughter who revenges herself by taking away her mother’s younger lover, whom she does not actually want.

A bleak, distinguished novel, with haunting pictures of foggy nights in Tsarist Russia and a rich dysfunctional family, it ends with the young woman breaking her ties, walking out in Paris and feeling free for the first time. Alas, we know what happened next.