Snow, Dog, Foot by Claudio Morandini

Snow, Dog, Foot

Claudio Morandini

An old hermit fending for himself in the Italian Alps is cut off from the local community by an avalanche, with only a stray dog for company - and a rival for the scant food available. Man and dog are pitted against Nature but the odd couple relationship is lightened with gallows humour: which one will end up eating the other? A convincing journey into madness and delusion - both unsettling and deeply affecting.

Extract
Adelmo Farandola has been convinced  for some time that if there's something not quite right in his head it's to do with the years he spent living under the cables of the power line. I've gone mad, I've gone mad, he repeats to himself expressionlessly, as though it were a normal observation, because those cables had to happen to someone after all, and they happened to him.
'Am I mad?' he asks the dog.
'Well, I'd say you're a bit odd, yes.
'It's those high-voltage cables.'
The dog looks up and doesn't see any.
'What cables?'
'The ones from when I was a boy.'
Parallels
  • A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler
  • Drive Your Plow Over the Bones Of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk