Two Ages, by Thomasine Gyllembourg

The young Claudine grows up as a foster child in a wealthy merchant family during and after the French Revolution. Nearly half a century later, her son, Charles, seeks out the descendants of the merchant family, who turn out to be narrow-minded and hypocritical.

Threshold, by Cornélio Penna

When Threshold was first published in 1935, it caused great perplexity in literary circles. The debut novel of Cornélio Penna, simple in form, compact in its succession of chapters—generally short, like scenes or inner tableaux of that nameless city nestled among mountains and the ghosts of the mining cycle—speaks to us of a world in decline, yet one that still lingers to haunt us.

The title Threshold already points to this undefined place between dream and reality, between past and present, between the natural and the supernatural, between belief and disbelief, between lucidity and madness, and gradually builds an atmosphere of suspense and mystery—not resolved like a detective story, but rather as an inner drama.

[This is my own, machine, translation; although I have given it the same title as a professional translation published elsewhere, for consistency.]