A Meal in Winter

During the Second World War, on a winter morning, three German soldiers set out across the frozen Polish countryside under orders to find a Jew and bring him back to their camp for execution. Once they have found a young man hidden among the trees, they stop to rest in an empty house and cook a meal, and a passing Pole joins them, his fierce anti-Semitism raising the tension. The short novel by French writer Hubert Mingarelli was the first of his books to be translated into English, and it became a sleeper hit in the United Kingdom.

Former Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly named it in a What CEOs are reading roundup.