Last Year’s Snow (in Ukrainian)

The book of memoirs by the brilliant German-speaking storyteller, a native of Chernivtsi, Gregor von Rezzori "Last Year's Snow" is neither an autobiography nor a memoir in the conventional sense of the word. In it, the writer takes us back to his early childhood spent in Bukovina, and vividly depicts the images of the people who surrounded him: the nanny-nurse Calandra, his parents, his sister who died early, and his governess Strauserl. From the perspective of the narrator, he recreates the pictures of his family's life in the first third of the 20th century, supplementing it with excursions into later times and other, more distant topos. For the ironic and skeptical author, as he appears in most of his works, this book is a peculiar form of intimate narrative. It is imbued with an elegiac mood and nostalgic longing for the forever lost, unique world of childhood.