Books Tell You Why, Inc.

A most attractive first edition/first printing in Fine in dust jacket with minute browning along edges, otherwise Fine.

Albert Corde, a prominent Chicago university dean begins his story in a bleak and apocalyptic Romania. The depths of an East European winter made even colder by the omnipresent Communist dictatorship seems nearly as leaden as the plum brandy he sips in the decaying parlor of his wife's ailing mother, Valeria. As the old woman, once a favored Communist official, now a sweetheart of an aging underground of pale faces and flowery dresses, slips into the slow throes of an early death, Corde is emotionally consumed; 8vo; [viii], 312 pages.

Price: $33.19