The Snow Was Dirty

And always the dirty snow, the heaps of snow that look rotten, with black patches and embedded garbage. The white powder that occasionally peels off from the crust of the sky in little clumps, like plaster from a ceiling, is unable to cover the filth.

Most people struggle to get by in a country under occupation, but Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse. But Frank is restless and through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, he will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go. In The Snow was Dirty, Simenon maps a no man's land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction-and redemption, perhaps, as well-by forces beyond its control.