In an empty classroom in the summer holidays, a morose provincial inspector of roads in Aragon packs himself into a child's desk to write a fable. The fable he builds is that of the Snow Queen, the Netherlands now stretched into a vast country extending from the Northern flatlands to hazardous Alpine ranges in the south. Kai and Lucia are circus illusionists, and when Kai is kidnapped, Lucia must rescue him from the Snow Queen's palace. Curious and elegantly erudite, In the Dutch Mountains is laced with the wit which characterises the work of this outstanding European writer.