Novel
The Mountain
La Neige en deuil
Henri Troyat · 1952
Synopsis
In an Alpine hamlet live two brothers. The elder, Isaïe, a former guide, has given up the mountain after an accident that left him diminished and looks after animals; the younger, Marcellin, much younger, struggles to bear the hardship and poverty of this life and dreams of elsewhere. A plane crashes very high up, on a snow-covered peak. Marcellin forms the mad plan of climbing up to plunder the wreck, and presses his elder brother to take him there.
Context
The novel appeared from Flammarion in 1952. It is inspired by a real disaster: on 3 November 1950, an Air India Lockheed Constellation, the Malabar Princess, had crashed on the Mont Blanc massif, at an altitude of around 4,700 metres. Its author sets against each other two brothers whom everything separates, honour and greed, loyalty to the mountain and the allure of modern life. In 1956 Edward Dmytryk made an American film from it, with Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner.
Who it is for
A short, tense narrative, without digressions, in which the mountain takes up as much space as the two brothers who climb it.
Prizes and reception
Translated into English by Constantine FitzGibbon, it appeared in 1953 in London and New York under the title The Mountain.
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