Jezebela novel that Irène Némirovsky (kyiv, 1903-Auschwitz, 1942), published in 1936, begins with the trial of an older, "extremely wealthy" and pretentious woman, Gladys Eysenach, accused of murdering her lover of twenty years. Throughout the first chapter, which essentially serves as a prologue, we witness the reconstruction of the crime scene through the interrogation of the accused and a large gallery of witnesses. Written almost like a Hollywood screenplay—with sharp, snappy dialogue, secrets revealed, worldliness, mystery, and drama—this prologue unfolds before the reader all the ingredients of what appears to be a passionate melodrama. We discover, because she herself has confessed, that the wealthy, elegant, and cosmopolitan Eysenach did indeed commit the crime. And we believe we also know her motivations: jealousy, spite, and mad love. However, after the prologue, the novel flashes back and proceeds to reconstruct the protagonist's life from her earliest youth. What we end up discovering is far worse than we imagined.

As an editor, do you find any connection between your approach to books and your approach to wine?

János Székely (Budapest, 1901–Berlin, 1958) was a conscious and sophisticated anti-fascist. A journalist, screenwriter (first in 1920s Germany and later in Hollywood), and novelist, he went into exile from his native Hungary when reactionary power was born. He later settled in America, fleeing a Europe occupied by Hitler's armies. It is curious, in this sense, that the protagonist of his short novel This is not done to Svoboda. (1940) is the complete opposite: a primary, pre-ideological, instinctive anti-fascist.

A month in the countryside, by the English editor and novelist J.L. Carr (1912–1994), is what it appears to be: a simple, vital, and amiable novel, a "rural idyll"—as the author himself calls the very brief preface—soaked in bittersweet nostalgia, a charming story about our human condition. But it is also much more. The placid summer sunshine that bathes and warms every page of the novel, as well as the good-naturedness and predisposition toward happiness of its protagonists, hide the memory of bitterly cold, muddy winters, broken hearts, traumatized memories, and horrific wounds. Wise without grandiloquence, Carr's novel, originally published in 1980 and now translated into Catalan by Dolors Udina with her usual skill, brings to mind that memorable verse by Leonard Cohen that says: "Everything has a chink: that's how the light gets in."