A Meal in Winter
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- £9.49
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- £9.49
Publisher Description
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 confont his own conscienence as the moral implications of their murderous mission become clear.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Mingarelli's brief, haunting novel, his first translated into English, three German soldiers Emmerich, Bauer, and an unnamed narrator all emotionally damaged by their role in executing Jewish prisoners on behalf of the Third Reich, request permission to search the Polish countryside for outliers. "We explained to him that we would rather do the hunting than the shootings," the narrator reports of a discussion with their commander. "We told him we didn't like the shootings." On patrol in freezing cold the next morning, the soldiers discover a young Jew hiding in an underground warren and begin the slog back to the barracks with him in tow. On the way, they stop at an unused house for a meal of soup, during which a Pole and his dog arrive. The dynamic among the men shifts as the soldiers try to glean the Pole's intentions and debate whether to release their prisoner or to seal his fate by returning with him to camp. Simple declarative sentences and crystalline, cinematic vignettes accrete to give voice to the soldiers' own shortcomings and fears about their life-and-death decision. With devastating concision, Mingarelli and his translator, Sam Taylor, carry the moral dilemma to an understated yet stunning conclusion.
