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The Snow Was Dirty

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The Snow Was Dirty

By: Georges Simenon, Howard Curtis - Translator
Narrated by: Joe Jameson
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About this listen

'A brilliant new translation of Simenon's critically acclaimed masterpiece.' And always the dirty snow, the heaps of snow that look rotten, with black patches and embedded garbage...unable to cover the filth.

Nineteen-year-old Frank - thug, thief, son of a brothel owner - gets by surprisingly well despite living in a city under military occupation, but a warm house and a full stomach are not enough to make him feel truly alive in such a climate of deceit and betrayal.

During a bleak, unending winter, he embarks on a string of violent and sordid crimes that set him on a path from which he can never return. Georges Simenon's matchless novel is a brutal, compelling portrayal of a world without pity; a devastating journey through a psychological no-man's land.

©2003 Georges Simenon (P)2016 Audible, Ltd Classics Crime Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime

Critic Reviews

"Among the best novels of the 20th century." ( New Yorker)
"An astonishing work." (John Banville)
"So noir it makes Raymond Chandler look beige." ( Independent)
All stars
Most relevant  
I read many reviews before reading/listening to this book. Let me say that I belive most readers missed the point. Frank is indeed a dirtbag yet to me he is tormented by the existentialism of the age. As he says 'everything is of equal value'.

He wishes to be a man yet as he has no father or father figure to look to he does the acts he does to be recognised by those who he looks up to as an equal. As he progresses he finds (as is often the case in life) that those he looks up to are valueless and that the real men are quite different.

In the end to me, Frank discovers the true value of life in the glimps of the 'previously despised life'. The value of true manhood and indeed the real purpose of life in the family.

Surprising intresting

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