Schlepping Through the Alps

 
“This marvelously alert, one-of-a-kind book fascinates by virtue of its eccentric honesty, humor, warmth, and intelligence. Sam Apple’s writing style sparkles, and the two brilliantly achieved, richly sympathetic characterizations at the heart of the book — the singing shepherd and the author himself — make for a dazzlingly satisfying read. I absolutely loved it.”—Phillip Lopate, editor of The Glorious American Essay
 
 
“At its best, Apple’s narrative voice is as grave as W.G. Sebald’s while as self-deprecating as a poetic version of Woody Allen’s. Europe in the wake of the Holocaust is risky material. I know of no other American of Apple’s generation writing non-fiction who has attempted as subtle and oblique an approach as this.”—Honor Moore, author of The White Blackbird
 
 
“In this wonderful book, Sam Apple has written a brilliantly comic and very dark pastorale about shepherds, Nazis and Jews, modern-day Austria, love and fidelity, and he has done it with such subtlety — with bright colors at the center and darkness around all the edges — that the effect is quite singular. I have never read a book quite like this, and I loved it; it’s that simple."—Charles Baxter, author of Saul and Patsy: A Novel and Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction