Universal Pictures has acquired screen rights to the Irene Nemirovsky book Suite Francaise and set Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) to adapt the tale about the occupation of France by German troops, according to Variety.

The story takes place in 1940, after German soldiers settle into a quiet occupation and the local villagers try to cope. At the center of the story is a romance between a French woman and a German soldier.

A popular writer in pre-WWII France, Nemirovsky wrote Suite Francaise shortly before she was sent to Auschwitz, where she died. Sixty years after she wrote it, Nemirovsky's book was discovered by family members. They thought it was a diary until they discovered the first two parts of what was to be five novels about the early occupation of France by the Nazis.