Longlisted for the 2022 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

"A fine and profoundly intelligent novel, written by an author who balances big ideas with human emotion. Wistful, yearning and wise." (Elizabeth Day)

"Faulks has returned to the terrain of Human Traces, geographically and thematically, with his new novel, Snow Country, the second in a planned Austrian trilogy that spans the first half of the 20th century and the reshaping of Europe through war.... The narrative moves between corresponding states of foreboding and reflection, rarely looking directly at the great war itself.... Through the gradual convergence of his characters' lives, Faulks powerfully evokes the mood of a continent that still has not processed its collective trauma, even as the threat of another looms.... In Snow Country, Faulks has created a richly melancholic novel of ideas that celebrates the pity, the comedy and the beauty of our brief lives." (The Guardian)

"Snow Country is a sprawling novel that ebbs and flows through decades as two deeply sensitive people find each other, lose each other, find others and lose others.... Among the tangled minutiae of human connection, Faulks laces the political and social upheaval of Europe in the first 30 years of the last century. The scope of this is remarkable; characters' lives play out in immense detail while retaining the observational quality Faulks has perfected rather than crossing over into mundane exposition.... Faulks has the rare ability to hold the human experience taut on the line, ready for inspection, examining each gleaming scale until veering towards the hypnotic.... Its own unique and expansive love story, ambling through decades." (The Irish Times)