A masterfully suspenseful “gem of a novel” in which a man finds himself caught between two realities (San Francisco Chronicle).
According to the medical staff, Dr. Georg Amberg has been in the hospital for five weeks, recovering from a brain hemorrhage after being run down by a car. But his memories say it’s only been five days. And little else syncs up with the official story he’s been given. The more he tries to understand what happened to him, the more questions arise: What of the violent events in the rural village of Morwede? The old woman threatening the priest with a bread knife, angry peasants with rakes and cudgels, Baron von Malchin defending his dreams for the Holy Roman Empire with a pistol—how could Dr. Amberg ignore these? And what of the secret experiment to make a mind-altering drug from a white mildew called Saint Peter’s Snow.
Leo Pertuz, much admired by Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Ian Fleming, and Graham Greene, offers a mystery of identity and a fable of faith and political fervor. Banned by the Nazis when it was first published in 1933, Saint Peter’s Snow is an elegant novel that is taut with suspense and full of Old World irony and humor.
“Rich in narrative and erotic suspense. . . . Worth reading in any language.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Masterly. It possesses the desperate inevitably of Edgar Allen Poe.” —The Jewish Chronicle
“Ranks with 1984 in its portrait of a manipulated populace . . . Perutz’s writing remains significant today.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“A compelling story, not only about the terrible consequences of fanaticism and delusion, but also about the reluctance to accept their existence. . . . A timeless tale.” —Kirkus Reviews
