Posthumous Works 9
Will 32
Hope in Your Hands 43
This person is 62
Dust 74
Jewel Eyes 101
The Dream of Gottfried Heinrich 134
I remember 149
Results Make All the Difference 169
Ballad 190
Bread! 196
Trace 212
Negotiation 232
Winter Travel 253

Epilogue 287

Commentary on the work 293
Author's Chronology 302

Maestro who played the multi-layered melody of the narrative

Cabret moves freely between the present and the past, allowing each story to be read as an independent narrative, while also creating hidden connections between the fragments, turning the entire work into a vast puzzle.
In the first short story, “Posthumous Works,” the pianist’s impulsive performance of Fischer’s variations also makes glimpses into the following independent short stories, providing readers with a new narrative.
In "Dream of Gottfried Heinrich," we can guess how the main motif of the variations, 'si b, la, re b, si, do', was created.
The title and final short story, "Winter Journey," introduces the process by which the protagonist Zoltan discovers and introduces Fischer's only variation to the world.


I thought I was creating a collection of entirely independent stories.
This was because the atmosphere of each story clamored for such independence.
But towards the end, during that very period, the very act of writing allowed me to discover some hidden or more explicit connections, to realize that everything was interconnected.
-From the "Epilogue"

As you follow the melody, the chronology of the birth, recording, performance, and appreciation of the theme melody is outlined as a coherent narrative.
In addition, various artistic devices are hidden throughout the fourteen short stories, such as Rembrandt's paintings, the family history of the great musician Bach, and the Ardevol family from "J'Confess."
"Winter Journey" is a work of art that brilliantly captures both the formal experimentation of multi-layered narrative intertwining in the process of answering these questions and the author's unique insight that "everything in life is connected."


Winter travelers walking the lonely road of life

Schubert's song cycle "Winterreise" depicts a man who, after experiencing a broken heart, becomes a cold winter wanderer and nearly dies.
Jaume Cabré's "Winter Journey" is a work that expresses this melodic impression through his own linguistic art. Like a traveler walking alone through a snow-covered forest, the characters in "Winter Journey" each carry their own loneliness and pain.
The film features a man who discovers that his sons are not his blood after his wife dies, a seemingly successful musicologist who is abandoned by the lover he has waited for his entire life, a survivor of the Shoah who dreams of rebuilding his life but whose only hope is suicide, a mother who was robbed of her children in the Yugoslav War, and a misogynist who resorts to extreme violence after being abandoned by his lover and having his masculinity attacked.
All of these protagonists walk through life as a journey, not a single path or destination, and must each endure loneliness, despair, and sorrow in their own way.


The author said, “I wrote stories about ordinary lives that already exist, but are so ordinary that they are not often told.”
Cabret revealed that when he first conceived the collection of short stories, he had no intention of connecting the stories, but as he continued to write, organic connections that he had not even imagined began to emerge and expand, as if the stories were speaking to each other.
It clearly reveals the contradictory fate of humans who must walk their own path in life alone, but cannot stand alone without love, friendship, art, and solidarity.
Cabret, who has been praised for his meticulous compositions and profound insights into human existence, explores the universal themes of art, morality, and time with his signature literary sensibility in this work.

I sat down in front of the attic door, not moving, and when a story passed by, he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and urged me to explain.
Thus, with tremendous patience as the cornerstone, I began to unravel the secrets of each individual story, and thus began to conjure up clear or vague ideas about the literary ending that would connect to the first sentence or word of the story, or the beginning of a story that even I had no idea how it would turn out.
-From the "Epilogue"