The peculiarity of snow – its impact on the landscape and on anybody walking through it – lends immediate atmosphere and crunchy quiet to the opening of Twelve Nights by Urs Faes, translated by Jamie Lee Searle (Harvill Secker, 84pp, £10.99). But snow also hides threats and each step must be a wary one.
So it is with Manfred as he revisits a German town near the farm on which he grew up and where his estranged brother still lives. Like all returning natives, he is keen to see what he remembers and what has changed. Above all, he needs to discover how much, if anything, has altered in his brother’s life and attitude towards him.
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