The Winter Soldier - A Book Talk

Set in 1914, in the gilded splendor of Imperial Vienna, Mason’s new novel, The Winter Soldier, transports readers into the beguiling and beautiful winter that dawned a new, less innocent Europe. Arriving in a remote Valley of the Carpathian Mountains, Lucius, a twenty-two-year-old medical student, bears witness to the first casualties of World War I, bringing him face-to-face with the thundering realities of war.

Propelled by the Romantic ideals of youth into the sweeping tide of history, Mason's transcendant new novel confronts timeless questions of love, family, and the limits of medicine.

Daniel Mason, Author; Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Stanford

Daniel Mason is the author of The Piano Tuner, A Far Country, Death of the Pugilist, and The Winter Soldier (2018). Mason’s work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, adapted for the stage, and recognized by an NEA fellowship. His writing has also appeared in Harper’s, Zoetrope: All Story, and Lapham’s Quarterly. A former visiting professor in Creative Writing at Stanford, where he led the Stegner workshop, Mason currently teaches undergraduate courses on the intersection between culture and psychiatry, and the literature of psychosis.