Francis Gilbert’s novel, Snow on the Danube, published March 2019 is a thrilling historical adventure story set in war-torn Budapest.
Béla has grown up in a cramped East London flat with his great uncle, once a Hungarian count; as far as he’s concerned his elderly relative is eccentric and annoying. But when his great-uncle dies, Béla is bequeathed a mysterious manuscript – a manuscript that reveals a completely different side to the count. For the first time Béla learns about the horrors his great uncle had to endure during the Second World War.
Snow on the Danube evokes the lost world of Budapest during and between two great wars — and is recounted in the inimitable voice of Count Zoltán Pongrácz: a fussy hypochondriac who becomes an unlikely and compromised hero when the Fascists take over his beloved country and he is forced to rescue his adored, wayward sister Anna. An unlikely comedy, a document of filial love and a compelling portrait of the horrors of war, Snow on the Danube is the story of one man’s quest to save everything he loves most: his family, his friends — and, perhaps, soul.