The Snow Was Dirty

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré

In this brilliant new translation of Georges Simenon’s classic novel, a young man descends into a brutal world of crime

“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, ...