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.

I still remember perfectly, twenty years ago, the impression that reading made on me French suiteby Irène Némirovsky (1903-1942). As always, I took it. This ironic, intelligent, meticulous, multilingual, and highly cultured woman did not deserve to die (if anyone did). deserves (to die), but she was murdered on August 17, 1942, in Birkenau. Three months later, her husband, Michel Epstein, would vanish from the same chimneys. They were Jewish. They had been born in Russia, fled the Bolsheviks, settled in France, and converted to Catholicism. But for the Nazis, they were simply "Jews."