Frost by Thomas Bernhard

A young intern is sent by a surgeon to spy on his brother, the painter. The Painter has chosen to live in a pestilential town, in an inn where the landlady serves food supplied by the town knacker. It's winter but rather than beautiful snowfields and mountains there's a cold that freezes animals grotesquely. Summer would have been no better because then it's a malarial swamp. The children who survive disease are backward and ugly while the child graves are neglected by their parents.

The Intern records the complaints and judgments of the Painter which reveal that everything in a dreadful place is getting worse. The exaggeration is almost comical. Even when the Painter describes another town he says: "The place was bland and claustrophobic like all mountain towns. It was near the source of a river that turns north, where it's a little less bleak". The story is written with humour, but in the end the effect of place and the characters, who are in some way archetypal -- The Surgeon, the Painter, the Engineer, the Knacker, the Landlady -- is overwhelming but quite brilliant.