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A Meal in Winter
Hubert Mingarelli
€ 10.99
€ 9.93
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Description for A Meal in Winter
Paperback. A miniature masterpiece, this is the spare, stunning story of three soldiers who share a meal with their Jewish prisoner and face a chilling choice Translator(s): Taylor, Sam. Num Pages: 144 pages. BIC Classification: FJMS; FYT. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 198 x 139 x 11. Weight in Grams: 108.
One morning, in the dead of winter, three German soldiers head out into the frozen Polish countryside. They have been charged by their commanders to track down and bring back for execution 'one of them' - a Jew. Having flushed out a young man hiding in the woods, they decide to rest in an abandoned house before continuing their journey back to the camp. As they prepare food, they are joined by a passing Pole whose virulent anti-Semitism adds tension to an already charged atmosphere. Before long, the group's sympathies begin to splinter as each man is forced to confront his own conscience as the moral implications of their murderous mission become clear.
Product Details
Publisher
Portobello Books Ltd
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2014
Condition
New
Number of Pages
144
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9781846275364
SKU
V9781846275364
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 4 to 8 working days
Ref
99-4
About Hubert Mingarelli
HUBERT MINGARELLI is the author of numerous novels, short story collections and fiction for young adults. His book Quatre soldats ([Four Soldiers], Le Seuil, 2003) won the Prix de Médicis. He lives in Grenoble. SAM TAYLOR is a translator, novelist and journalist. His translated works include Laurent Binet's award-winning novel HHhH. His own novels have been translated in 10 languages.
Reviews for A Meal in Winter
The most moving book I have read for a long time... Mingarelli's spare language is well suited to this luminous tale... he accomplishes a great deal
Peter Carty
Independent on Sunday
The "banality of evil" finds beautiful, spare expression in this remarkable novella
Ian McEwan A masterpiece
Independent
In its modest duration and economical prose, [this book] communicates more than most novels twice or three times its length... Praise is due to the translator, Sam Taylor, who appears to have weighed every word with supreme care, capturing the rhythm of a measured tread through the icy landscape... Brave and original... a masterpiece
Alastair Mabbott
Herald
A sparse, beautiful and shocking novel that finds a more intimate route into the Holocaust
Ian McEwan
the Sunday Times
Mingarelli's lapidary tale of awakened conscience unites historical events with the mood of a forest fairy-tale.... Brief, elegant, quietly lyrical yet driven by an inward fire
Boyd Tonkin
Independent
Superb... The prose, elegantly translated by Sam Taylor, is full of rich visual descriptions... Enormously powerful and moving
David Evans
Independent on Sunday
So memorable, so dark, so humane, it deserves to be read all over Europe. A masterpiece of empathy and horror
Jane Housham
Guardian
One of the most quietly shattering novels I've read
Cynan Jones, author
The Dig
Deliver[s] a powerful punch
Lucy Popescu, Books of the Year
Tablet
Beautiful and disturbing... complex and surprising
Mark Smith
Herald
This strong and simple story packs a mighty punch
Kate Saunders
The Times
Superb and devastating
Luke Brown, author
My Biggest Lie
Chilling... From the first lines one is taken somewhere one would never wish to go, thanks to the clear, direct style, and the brilliant dialogue... impossible to put down
Libération
The tragedy of the holocaust has rarely been better told than in this short tale, resonant with sadness and poetry
La Vie
This new novel by Mingarelli doesn't offer any miracles, but his story of wretched humanity revived around a piping hot dish shows once more the greatness of an incredibly unassuming author. Breathtaking
Pelerin
The prose draws you in... Starkly realistic
Rachel Dunn
Cambridge News
This is Mingarelli at his best. A story delivered with restraint, in hushed, sensitive prose. Perfect
La Montagne
A gem of a novel, slight but so powerful
Bookseller
Mingarelli find[s] new ways - oblique, lyrical, humane - to address the Nazi past
Boyd Tonkin
Independent
Masterly and necessary... no intervening hand is noticeable in Sam Taylor's rendering of Mingarelli
Lesley Chamberlain
TLS
Devastating... Crisply translated by Sam Taylor
Arifa Akbar
Independent
It's a brave novelist who sets out to tell a Holocaust tale from the point of view of the would-be executioner but this is what Mingarelli does with great skill and admirable subtlety. A breathtaking lesson in brevity
Monocle
A fascinating, compelling vignette from Nazi-occupied Poland explored by a masterful storyteller
Paddy Kehoe
RTE
A narrative of bleak genius
Eileen Battersby
Irish Times
138 profound pages of horror and humanity
John Kelly ‘Book of the year’
Irish Times
I so recommend this brilliant, devastating, compelling WW2 novel
Simon Sebag Montefiore Mingarelli's writing possesses a deceptive simplicity, and the novella proceeds so quietly that one is almost unprepared when the spectre of genocide intrudes upon it
Wall Street Journal
Peter Carty
Independent on Sunday
The "banality of evil" finds beautiful, spare expression in this remarkable novella
Ian McEwan A masterpiece
Independent
In its modest duration and economical prose, [this book] communicates more than most novels twice or three times its length... Praise is due to the translator, Sam Taylor, who appears to have weighed every word with supreme care, capturing the rhythm of a measured tread through the icy landscape... Brave and original... a masterpiece
Alastair Mabbott
Herald
A sparse, beautiful and shocking novel that finds a more intimate route into the Holocaust
Ian McEwan
the Sunday Times
Mingarelli's lapidary tale of awakened conscience unites historical events with the mood of a forest fairy-tale.... Brief, elegant, quietly lyrical yet driven by an inward fire
Boyd Tonkin
Independent
Superb... The prose, elegantly translated by Sam Taylor, is full of rich visual descriptions... Enormously powerful and moving
David Evans
Independent on Sunday
So memorable, so dark, so humane, it deserves to be read all over Europe. A masterpiece of empathy and horror
Jane Housham
Guardian
One of the most quietly shattering novels I've read
Cynan Jones, author
The Dig
Deliver[s] a powerful punch
Lucy Popescu, Books of the Year
Tablet
Beautiful and disturbing... complex and surprising
Mark Smith
Herald
This strong and simple story packs a mighty punch
Kate Saunders
The Times
Superb and devastating
Luke Brown, author
My Biggest Lie
Chilling... From the first lines one is taken somewhere one would never wish to go, thanks to the clear, direct style, and the brilliant dialogue... impossible to put down
Libération
The tragedy of the holocaust has rarely been better told than in this short tale, resonant with sadness and poetry
La Vie
This new novel by Mingarelli doesn't offer any miracles, but his story of wretched humanity revived around a piping hot dish shows once more the greatness of an incredibly unassuming author. Breathtaking
Pelerin
The prose draws you in... Starkly realistic
Rachel Dunn
Cambridge News
This is Mingarelli at his best. A story delivered with restraint, in hushed, sensitive prose. Perfect
La Montagne
A gem of a novel, slight but so powerful
Bookseller
Mingarelli find[s] new ways - oblique, lyrical, humane - to address the Nazi past
Boyd Tonkin
Independent
Masterly and necessary... no intervening hand is noticeable in Sam Taylor's rendering of Mingarelli
Lesley Chamberlain
TLS
Devastating... Crisply translated by Sam Taylor
Arifa Akbar
Independent
It's a brave novelist who sets out to tell a Holocaust tale from the point of view of the would-be executioner but this is what Mingarelli does with great skill and admirable subtlety. A breathtaking lesson in brevity
Monocle
A fascinating, compelling vignette from Nazi-occupied Poland explored by a masterful storyteller
Paddy Kehoe
RTE
A narrative of bleak genius
Eileen Battersby
Irish Times
138 profound pages of horror and humanity
John Kelly ‘Book of the year’
Irish Times
I so recommend this brilliant, devastating, compelling WW2 novel
Simon Sebag Montefiore Mingarelli's writing possesses a deceptive simplicity, and the novella proceeds so quietly that one is almost unprepared when the spectre of genocide intrudes upon it
Wall Street Journal