
Cow is the story of a Spanish agricultural labourer Ambrosio who goes to Switzerland as a Gastarbeiter He is bound for Innenwald a village in the Swiss highlands & the novel begins as he is about to spend a summer working for Farmer Knuchel It ends in the abattoir of the neighbouring city at the end of the seven hard years of labour that have destroyed him There he sees Blosch the once magnificent lead cow on Knuchel's farm now a sad condemned creature in the abattoir Cow was acclaimed as a contemporary classic on first publication Now more than ever it must be read as a book of archaic power about man his work & his food & most importantly as a damning indictment of the relationship between man & the animal world