"A Meal in Winter"
This is a short novel, translated from the French. The author is Hubert Mingarelli (I had never heard of him), and apparently he usually writes books for what are called 'young adults'. But this is a very powerful novel and in every respect aimed at a sophisticated reader.
The narrator is a German soldier stationed in Poland during a very cold winter of World War II. It slowly becomes clear that his squad's mission is the extermination of Jews: hunting them, capturing them, and bringing them back to the camp to be shot.
The narrator and his two comrades have no stomach for the daily executions, but their only way to avoid this is to be assigned to search for Jews in the forests and bring them back to the camp. “We would rather do the hunting than the shootings,” he tells his base commander. So the narrator and his two very different compatriots embark on a long, frigid search, and about a third of the way through the novel they capture a “Jew,” (the first time this word is used), who crawls out from an underground hiding place. Much of the rest of the novel finds the three soldiers and their captive in a ramshackle cottage, where they find refuge from the cold. They then face the problems of how to light and fuel the stove, how to cook, eat, and stay warm. The intrusion of a Polish hunter from the countryside further complicates their situation. As they spend time and share food together, the captors experience some subtle shifts. Over the course of “the strangest meal we ever had in Poland,” the narrator and his companions wrestle with the morality of delivering their captive to the camp and his execution.
The narrator is a German soldier stationed in Poland during a very cold winter of World War II. It slowly becomes clear that his squad's mission is the extermination of Jews: hunting them, capturing them, and bringing them back to the camp to be shot.
The narrator and his two comrades have no stomach for the daily executions, but their only way to avoid this is to be assigned to search for Jews in the forests and bring them back to the camp. “We would rather do the hunting than the shootings,” he tells his base commander. So the narrator and his two very different compatriots embark on a long, frigid search, and about a third of the way through the novel they capture a “Jew,” (the first time this word is used), who crawls out from an underground hiding place. Much of the rest of the novel finds the three soldiers and their captive in a ramshackle cottage, where they find refuge from the cold. They then face the problems of how to light and fuel the stove, how to cook, eat, and stay warm. The intrusion of a Polish hunter from the countryside further complicates their situation. As they spend time and share food together, the captors experience some subtle shifts. Over the course of “the strangest meal we ever had in Poland,” the narrator and his companions wrestle with the morality of delivering their captive to the camp and his execution.
To quote a glowing review: "The command of tone and voice sustains tension until the very last page of a novel that will long resonate in the reader’s conscience."
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