Black Snow

First time in Russian: the existential pastoral novel by the modern Irish classic Paul Lynch, Booker Prize winner 2023 for the novel “Song of a Prophet,” already being called the Irish “1984” and a new “The Handmaid’s Tale.” “Black Snow” is a “brilliant, hypnotic book” (Philip Meyer, author of the novel “The Son”), next to which “most of contemporary prose is noticeably dimmer” (National Public Radio).

In the spring of 1945, Matthew Peebles runs into a burning byre to get the trapped livestock out—and dies. Barnabas Caine, the farm owner, shattered by his friend’s death, tries to restore the farm, but his wife Esra can’t breathe from uncertainty about tomorrow, and their son Billy is crushed under the weight of a terrible secret…