How do stories begin, and why? What are the conditions for writing fiction? Need, compulsion, a listener, opportunity, rhetoric. . . In The Snow Sleeper, the art and meaning of storytelling is illuminated in four magically interwoven tales of friendship. In each, a narrator's narrow vision is gradually broadened and transformed into piercing self-knowledge. The characters are linked each to the other in strange, recurring loops, drawing the reader into the depths of a beautiful snowstorm.