This new award-winning collection confirms Giorgio Pressburger as a European master of the short story, always searching for the metaphysical truths that lie hidden in human lives. Each tale is wondrous in its situation and telling, but each refined truth it contains is hauntingly familiar in its resonance.
In the title story, four rabbis on a trip through the mountains offer marvellous and revealing interpretations of the similarities between snow and guilt, just before an avalanche, killing three of them, provides the most concrete interpretation of all for the survivor. In other stories, horrors await a scientist who provokes unrequited passion in a young girl; a wheelchair-bound philosopher rails at cosmic injustice throughout the events of the twentieth century; and a man who saves a kitten from death unwittingly changes his life through a random act of kindness. These stories, ostensibly reported by the author's former classmates, conclude with a tale of love written by Giorgio Pressburger's brother and fellow writer, the late Nicola Pressburger.
