A Meal in Winter: A Novel of World War II
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About this ebook
This timeless short novel begins one morning in the dead of winter, during the darkest years of World War II, with three German soldiers heading out into the frozen Polish countryside. They have been charged by their commanders with tracking down and bringing 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 when each man is forced to confront his own conscience as the moral implications of their murderous mission become clear.
Described by Ian McEwan as “sparse, beautiful and shocking,” A Meal in Winter is a “stark and profound” work by a Booker Prize–nominated author (The New York Times).
“Sustains tension until the very last page.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Hubert Mingarelli
Hubert Mingarelli is the author of numerous novels and short story collections, as well as fiction for young adults. His novel A Meal in Winter was shortlisted for the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and was selected by Indies Introduce in the United States. He lives in Grenoble. Sam Taylor (translator) is an acclaimed translator and novelist who lives in Texas. His translations include A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli (The New Press), Special Envoy by Jean Echenoz (The New Press), The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf, and the award-winning HHhH by Lauren Binet.
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Reviews for A Meal in Winter
78 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/53.5 A short and simply written book that has a very complex moral situation. Three German soldiers in the woods, find a Jewish young man and take him prisoner. They find a house and have a most unusual dinner, a dinner a Pole soon joins, filled with hate for the Jewish man.That's the gist of it but it is well written, the cold in the woods, the snow and the German soldiers musings, all create tension. What will happen? What will be decided? How will the men cope with what they have done in the past? There is as much meaning in what is unsaid as what is said. This was not at all graphic, not violent but the implications are there. Sometimes people are not able to choose their lives and that is certainly the case here.ARC from Publisher.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In sparse, precise language, Mingarelli tells the tale of three Germans out hunting Polish Jews in order to avoid an activity which makes them sick--the mass shooting of Jews who have been brought into a camp. They are ordinary men doing truly terrible things. They know they are doing terrible things and it makes them sick. In the meantime, they worry about eating, and staying warm. They aren't hateful anti-semitics, but friends who care about each other and are just trying to get by the best they can in a horrible situation. However, when given the chance to do something humane, they choose to do what is easiest. It is a disturbing, but rather remarkable book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Early one morning, in the dead of a Polish winter, in the middle of WWII, three German soldiers set out to hunt for Jews in hiding in the woods. They requested the task, having reached the point of being unable to continue with the shootings. They set out, on that cold morning and walk for some time. During the day they will encounter two men, one of whom will walk away. They will also share a meal with those two men. This is a novella of surprising depth. It's a simple story, told straight-forwardly, but it leaves a lot to think about.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This short novel is both insidious and devastating – but you have to read it. It is insidious, because it tries to get you to empathise with three members of one of the Nazi “einsatzgruppen” operating in Poland during the second world war; and it is devastating because it illustrates how one group of human beings can convince themselves, and maintain the conviction, that others are less than human. The novel describes a day in the lives of one of the death squads that went out hunting and murdering Jews hidden in the forests. Rather than describing them as the archetypal heartless Nazi killers that we have become all too familiar with, the author treats them as real people, each with their own individual needs and problems. I found myself fighting the temptation to sympathise with their concerns. Hitler’s propaganda machine prepared the way for the Shoah by the relentless repetition of the message that Jews were “untermenschen”, sub-human. It was this that allowed regular Germans to participate in mass-murder or – at best – close their eyes to it; and this same tactic has since been used by the perpetrators of other genocidal projects, like the Serbs’ in Bosnia and the Hutus’ in Ruanda. The apparent empathy with which our author strives to get inside the hearts and minds of the three SS protagonists – in contrast to the way that the Jew in the story is treated purely as an object with no subjective presence - in the end serves to expose the lies and the excuses. No one was really taken in by the propaganda; it served their own interests to pretend to believe it; but it required conscious effort and awareness in order to maintain that pretense.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A heartbreaking short novel by a French author. It rewards careful reading and made me think of Solzhenitsyn at times--his sense of the oppressive, constant pressure on those existing within a totalitarian regime. I have been reading many histories of WWII in Europe over the past ten months, and I have become aware that, sadly, antisemitism predated the Nazis; it was rampant in Europe for centuries, and remained very much alive in the 19th and 20th centuries. Also, the "average" German was commonly not against persecution and/or murder of Jews wherever they were found, as long as it could be done discreetly, without too much public bloodshed. One interesting book is "Hitler's Willing Executioners," which discusses both the Germans and the non-Jewish residents of occupied countries who willingly and often eagerly destroyed Jews. The Nazis did not initiate or create antisemitism, rather they harnessed it. One thing I remember is that there are documents showing that the Nazis typically did not force German troops and residents of occupied territories to work in execution squads against their will for the most part, and that they would find other work for those who objected to murdering Jews. Unfortunately, non-Jews had convinced themselves, against reason and against all the evidence to the contrary, that Jews were a problem in their communities and in their countries. This mindset made it so much easier for the Nazis to enact their pogroms and genocide. The brilliance of this short novel is that the author condenses the broad political and personal aspects of this murderous reality and exposes the humanity of both the persecutors and the persecuted.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A miniature masterpiece, this is the sparse, stunning story of three soldiers who share a meal with their Jewish prisoner and face a chilling choice.
One morning, in the dead of winter, three German soldiers are dispatched 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 the 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 outspoken anti-Semitism adds tension to an already charged atmosphere.
Before long, the group’s sympathies have splintered as they consider the moral implications of their murderous mission and confront their own consciences to ask themselves: should the Jew be offered food? And, having shared their meal, should he be taken back, or set free?
French novelist Hubert Mingarelli’s English debut, A Meal in Winter,is a powerful, sparsely written masterpiece.
It reads like a one act play,with a cast of 5, one of whom is the unknown narrator. The reader follows their journey were almost every action is driven by the need to survive: to survive the day; to survive the night; and the ultimate goal, to survive the war.
You can feel the stark freezing Polish winter, smell the pitiful meal that they attempt to cook. You understand their emotional detachment, the lack of enthusiasm for their task and eventually their humanity as they argue about the fate of their prisoner beginning with whether to feed him or not...
"Because if you want to know what it is that tormented me, and that torments me to this day, it's seeing that kind of thing on the clothes of the Jews we're going to kill: a piece of embroidery, coloured buttons, a ribbon in the hair. I was always pierced by those thoughtful maternal displays of tenderness." - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This novella says an awful lot in just a few pages. I was asked to read and review the galley copy for this story. It was originally written in French and has been recently translated to English. As difficult as it is to read, it is an important work. In a few words, and in the space of one short winter's day, Mingarelli manages to distill the ugliness of the second world war into about 140 pages. The story is about three Nazi soldiers who are stationed in Poland. It's the middle of winter, but the Nazi machine rumbles on. Their main duty, as dictated by their officers, is to capture runaway Jews and bring them back to their camp for execution. The three set out early on a cold winter morning, and we, the readers, travel with them through the snow-covered land. We see the three as they try to come to terms with what they have to do and what they have witnessed. We see their humanity and we see their cruelty played against the unforgiving background of a Polish winter. We also see that it is nearly impossible for any human being to see and do what these three do without them being forever changed. The descent of humanity told succinctly in 140 pages! It's a difficult little book to read, but one that shows the effects of war on humanity. War takes no prisoners, and it makes no difference which side a soldier is fighting on. The experiences will forever change them.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Short but good read. So much is left to the imagination.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Meal in Winter – Strong and SimpleThis novella is probably one of the most powerful short stories that I have read in a long time. The setting is somewhere I know well, in South East Poland and was happening early on in the German occupation of the country. When German soldiers were rounding up Jews, and shooting them, before the introduction of the murder camps.Three German soldiers, Emmerich, Baur and the narrator, wanted to avoid being used by Lieutenant Graff, who enjoyed the rounding up of and the execution of the Jews in the locality. Every soldier had to shoot the captured the Jews, and this was deeply affecting these soldiers. They convinced their commanding officer to allow them to go at first light and look for Jews in the woods and village and bring them back to camp to be dealt with.The following morning all three set out before daybreak into the frozen waste lands of Polish winter. Where the snow is deep, and the temperature are well below freezing and even wrapped up well they are freezing and hungry.When Emmerich notices a hiding place in the forest they capture a hiding Jew and start marching him back to the camp. They are hungry and find an empty house which they use to cook the stolen food they have brought with them. Their captive is shoved in the storeroom.As the three soldiers’ bond while waiting for their food to cook, a Pole joins them and brings some potato vodka with him. While they agree to feed him, they can see he is even more anti-Semitic than they are. They discuss how they hate what they are doing and whether they should release their captive. They talked about family and dreams, while waiting for their food to cook.Once they had finished their food, the Pole left them, and they took their captive back to camp where he would face certain death in the morning. All because they were afraid what Graff and their comrades would think of them and that they would not be able to get out of the shootings if they did not.Over the 138 pages we have a book that really packs a punch.
Book preview
A Meal in Winter - Hubert Mingarelli
THEY HAD RUNG the iron gong outside and it was still echoing, at first for real in the courtyard, and then, for a longer time, inside our heads. We would not hear it again. We had to get up straight away. Lieutenant Graaf never had to ring the iron twice. A meagre light came through the frost-covered window. Emmerich was sleeping on his side. Bauer woke him. It was late afternoon, but Emmerich thought it was morning. He sat up on his bed and looked at his boots, seeming not to understand why he’d slept in them all night.
In the meantime, Bauer and I had already put our boots on. Emmerich got up and went to look through the window, but he couldn’t see anything because of the frost, so he kept on struggling to disentangle night from day. Bauer explained to him that it was afternoon and Graaf was calling us.
‘What, again?’ Emmerich groaned. ‘What for? So we can freeze to death?’
‘Hurry up,’ I told him.
‘You’re kidding,’ Emmerich replied. ‘Why should I hurry just so I can freeze while I’m standing to attention?’
We felt the same way as him. The whole company did. Why did Lieutenant Graaf need to muster us outside? Wasn’t he afraid of the cold, like we were? We could just as easily have heard what he had to say standing by our camp beds here in the warm. Presumably he didn’t think it was formal enough, talking to us inside a gymnasium. He’d had a piece of old iron hung from a telephone pole, and we hated the noise it made when it was rung, that sinister chime, even more than the cold that awaited us outside. We had no choice – we obeyed orders – but all the same, it took courage to go out in weather like that.
We had put on our coats, and wound our scarves several times around our necks, tying them behind. Next came the wool balaclava. Completely covered except for our eyes, we went out into the gymnasium courtyard. Bauer, Emmerich and I were the last ones out there.
We were used to it, we knew what to expect, and yet the cold always came as a shock. It seemed as if it entered through your eyes and spread through your whole body, like icy water pouring through two holes. The others were already there, lined up and shivering. While we found our places among them, they hissed at us that we were arseholes for making the whole company wait like that. We said nothing. We got in line. And, when everyone had stopped shuffling their feet to get warm, Graaf, our lieutenant, told us that there would be more arrivals that day, but late probably, so the work was scheduled for the following day, and that this time our company would be taking care of it. I had the same thought as everyone else: was that all? Couldn’t he have told us that inside?
Graaf could not tell how it made us feel to know that there would be more arrivals that day. He couldn’t see if we were whispering behind our scarves. All he could see was our eyes. And from that distance, he could not yet guess who would report sick the following day.
He hadn’t told us how many were coming. He knew it made a difference to us, that it was important. Because if a lot came, he worried that we’d start reporting sick that night.
He nodded, turned around, and went to the officers’ mess.
We could have broken rank now and gone back inside, but we didn’t. We stayed where we were. Earlier, we would have given almost anything not to have to go outside, and yet we waited before returning to the warm. Perhaps it was because of the work that awaited us the following day. Or because we were already frozen inside, so a few minutes more made no difference.
Now they were outside anyway, the soldiers in charge of the stove that night took the opportunity to fill their buckets with coal. Bauer and I were looking over at the officers’ mess because apparently they had a bathtub. We’d been talking about it when the iron sounded. I told Bauer that, in the old days, I’d saved up to have a bathtub fitted. We often used that phrase. We often said ‘in the old days’, partly as a joke, but not entirely. Emmerich came towards us. He tried not to show us his distress. He had dark rings around his eyes from sleeping during the day.
We went back inside, and sat on Bauer’s bed. We didn’t talk about the work that awaited us the next day. But because we didn’t talk about it, we felt the pressure of it building inside us.
THAT EVENING, WE asked to see our base commander. What else could we do? We were able to go over Graaf’s head because he’d left to see an acquaintance in town – thankfully, as I doubt he’d have let us do it otherwise. The base commander looked away as he listened to us, his hands fidgeting in his pockets as though he were searching for something. We didn’t hold back when we spoke to him. He was a bit older than us. In civilian life, he bought and sold fabric in bulk. It was difficult for us to imagine that, though, because for us he had always been some sort of commander.
We weren’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. Occasionally he would glance towards the door, or give quick little nods. Not because he was in a rush, but because he understood us. We exaggerated a little bit, of course. Here, if you wanted an inch, you always had to ask for a mile. If the cook were to start being a bit stingy with his portions, for example, we would have to say that we were starving to death, otherwise nothing would ever change.
That evening, what we had to say was more important, and our commander gave those occasional nods to show he understood this. We explained to him that we would rather do the hunting than the shootings. We told him we didn’t like the shootings: that doing it made us feel bad at the time and gave us bad dreams at night. When we woke in the morning, we felt down as soon as we started thinking about it, and if it went on like this, soon we wouldn’t be able to stand it at all – and if it ended up making us ill, we’d be no use to anybody. We would not have spoken like that, so openly and frankly, to another commander. He was a reservist like we were, and he slept on a camp bed too. But the killings had aged him more than they had us. He’d lost weight and sometimes he looked so distraught that we feared he would fall ill before we did and that another, less understanding commander would be appointed in his place: someone we didn’t know, or – worse, perhaps – someone we did know. Because it could easily be Graaf, our lieutenant. He didn’t sleep on a camp bed. He took good care of himself, but not of us. With him in charge, there would be less coal and more marching. With Graaf, we would be ceaselessly filing in and out of the base. When we thought about this, we could hear the iron echoing from dawn till dusk. It went without saying that we liked our commander, no matter how distraught he was.
As usual, he gave us what we asked for, and we left the next morning – Emmerich, Bauer and myself. We went at dawn, before the first shootings. That meant missing breakfast, but it also meant not having to face Graaf, who would be filled with hatred that we had gone over his head. It was still dark, and everything was frozen. The road was harder than stone. We walked for a long time without stopping – in the cold air, under the frozen sky – but we weren’t unhappy, in spite of that.
And it was as though I’d lied to the commander the previous evening, because that night, for once, I didn’t dream about our life here. I dreamed