A Meal in Winter | Granta

  • Published: 04/09/2014
  • ISBN: 9781846275364
  • 129x20mm
  • 144 pages

A Meal in Winter

Hubert Mingarelli

Translated by Sam Taylor

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.

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

The Author

HUBERT MINGARELLI is the author of numerous acclaimed novels, short story collections and fiction for young adults. His first novel to be translated into English, A Meal in Winter, was shortlisted for the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Four Soldiers won the Prix Medicis on publication in France and the English translation was shortlisted for the Man Booker International 2019. His last novel, The Invisible Land, was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt. He died in 2020.

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The Translator

Sam Taylor is a translator, novelist and journalist. His translations include the award-winning French novel, HHhH by Laurent Binet. His novels have reached an international audience: The Republic of Trees (Faber, 2005) was translated into Italian, German, Korean and Hungarian and was turned into the film All Good Children (2010); The Island at the End of the World (2009) was translated into French and Turkish and a film is in development. He has written for many newspapers and magazine,s including The Guardian, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Vogue and Esquire, and also worked for 10 years as an editor and sub-editor at The Observer.

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