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A Whole Life

A Whole Life

by Charlotte Collins (Translator), Charlotte Collins (Translator), Robert Seethaler (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2015

    $5.82
Synopsis

'Heart-rending and heart-warming . . . for all its gentleness, a very powerful novel' Jim Crace

Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, Andreas' heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in WWII - where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus - and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven . . .

Like John Williams' Stoner or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. An exquisite novel about a simple life, it has already demonstrated its power to move thousands of readers with a message of solace and truth. It looks at the moments, big and small, that make us what we are.

Translated by Charlotte Collins.

$5.82

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 160
 Edition: Main Market
 Publisher: Picador
Published: 02 Jul 2015
ISBN 10: 1447281896
ISBN 13: 9781447281894
Book Overview: The 170,000-copy German bestseller

Media Reviews
Robert Seethaler's quietly mesmerizing novel - elemental in both tone and subject - shows what joy and nobility can be found in a life of hardship, patience and bereavement. It is at once heart-rending and heart-warming. A Whole Life, for all its gentleness, is a very powerful book. -- Jim Crace
Against the backdrop of a literary world that often seems crowded with novels yelling Look at me! , it's refreshing to read a story marked by quiet, concentrated attention . . . Seethaler's scenes of mountain life are realised with spare, almost surreally vivid images. But what is perhaps most remarkable about this remarkable novel is the way that it continually weaves past, present and future into a single fabric. -- Adam Lively * Sunday Times *
Robert Seethaler's novel is, like its hero, short on words but in its 150 pages manages to do exactly what it says on the tin: embrace a whole life... It's an unremarked existence, told in simple prose, of a simple man that magically captures the universal in all our lives. A slim masterpiece. * Daily Mail *
Now another of these special, calm narratives that penetrate the joy and grief, the tiny comforts of being alive and the experiences which shape an individual has arrived . . . As haunting and as spare as Stoner. It has been sensitively and astutely translated into English by Charlotte Collins . . . a gentle, tender work devoid of sentimentality yet so evocative and moving . . . No praise is too high for A Whole Life. Its daunting beauty lingers. This is a profound, wise and humane novel that no reader will forget. -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Seethaler renders a life at once ordinary and exquisite, exploring the vagaries of solitude with a gentle humility. * Times Literary Supplement *
It takes barely two hours to read it but would take a lifetime to forget. -- Graham Robb
Genuine wisdom and restrained poetry . . . Charlotte Collins' translation is a great triumph. * Sunday Telegraph *
From its first sentence, Seethaler grips you with a quiet matter-of-factness as he delineates with a suitably spare beauty the life of woodsman Andreas Egger. * Independent on Sunday *
A Whole Life is a lovely contemplation of a life in solitude in a remote valley, into which the modern world slowly intrudes. -- Ian McEwan * Sunday Times *
Author Bio
Robert Seethaler was born in Vienna in 1966 and is the author of several novels including A Whole Life and The Tobacconist. A Whole Life was a top ten-bestseller in Germany, and has garnered huge acclaim. Charlotte Collins studied English at Cambridge University. She worked as an actor and radio journalist in both Germany and the U.K. before becoming a literary translator. She has translated work by Robert Seethaler and Nino Haratischwili.