The Snows of Yesteryear

Portraits for an Autobiography

Gregor Rezzori

From Poland to the Czech Republic, Hungary to the Ukraine, discover ten masterpieces of black comedy, cold-war satire, moving memoir and brilliant writing from Central Europe

The Snows of Yesteryear (1989) is Gregor von Rezzori's haunting evocation of his childhood in Czernowitz, in present-day Ukraine. Growing up after the First World War, Rezzori portrays a twilit world suspended between the dying ways of an imperial past and the terrors of the twentieth century. He recalls his volatile, boar-hunting father, his earthy nursemaid, his fragile, aristocratic mother, his adored governess and the tragic death of his beloved sister, in a luminous story of war, unrest, eccentricity, folk tales, dark forests, night flights, and what it is like to lose your home.

'One of those rare and lovely books ... in the precision and quality of Rezzori's prose, in his passion for the perfect detail, and in his power to capture the reader's heart' Alan Furst