The Snow Was Dirty

Description

A new translation of Simenon's visceral, critically acclaimed classic And always the dirty snow, the heaps of snow that look rotten, with black patches and embedded garbage. The white powder that occasionally peels off from the crust of the sky in little clumps, like plaster from a ceiling, is unable to cover the filth. Most people struggle to get by in a country under occupation, but Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse. But Frank is restless and through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, he will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go. In The Snow was Dirty, Simenon maps a no man's land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction-and redemption, perhaps, as well-by forces beyond its control.

Georges Simenon (Author) Georges Simenon was born in Li ge, Belgium, in 1903. He is best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret novels and his prolific output of over 400 novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.

A brutal analysis of a wartime collaborator's moral vacuity. There's a cold, ruthless beauty to Simenon's writing. * Spectator * Feels incredibly modern... it is brutal, frank about sex and violence, and will make your flesh creep. -- Ian Rankin A masterpiece, completely brilliant . . . so nihilistic and so completely barren . . . but it is saved from being comically French by the vigour with which the story is told and the great knowingness of the author's voice. -- India Knight One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories * Guardian * Fierce, bleak and compellingly written . . . with pitiless landscapes of hopeless longing, random cruelty and galloping fate warmed only by the twilit lyricism of doomed desire. These are novels of eye-opening, spine-tingling control and intensity. -- Boyd Tonkin * The Independent * A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness * Independent *