Robert Seethaler

Cover image for The Cafe with No Name by Robert Seethaler

The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler (transl. Katy Derbyshire): Everyday life writ large

This is the fourth novel by Robert Seethaler I’ve reviewed on here. The first was A Whole Life which sees a man lead a simple yet rich life, leaving his alpine valley just once. After that I snapped up both The Tobacconist and The Field as soon as they appeared. All offer a slice of […]

The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler (transl. Katy Derbyshire): Everyday life writ large Read More »

Cover image for The Field by Robert Seethaler

The Field by Robert Seethaler (transl. Charlotte Collins: Giving voice to the dead

Back in 2015, I reviewed Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life, a beautifully written novella about a man who’d barely left his mountain hamlet, revealing the richness of even the simplest of lives. The following year’s The Tobacconist, set in Vienna in the months before Hitler annexed Austria, was equally striking raising high hopes for his

The Field by Robert Seethaler (transl. Charlotte Collins: Giving voice to the dead Read More »

The Dolomites - near selva

Pandemic Travels From My Sofa: Walking in the Mountains of Italy, Switzerland and Austria,

Walking is the thing that’s helped keep me sane – so far – throughout the pandemic. That and blogging with its virtual community, still there when I can’t see my other friends. I’ve resisted using the term ‘lockdown’ because, for me, that would have meant the end of the permitted daily exercise outside the house

Pandemic Travels From My Sofa: Walking in the Mountains of Italy, Switzerland and Austria, Read More »

Cover image

Five Novellas I’ve Read

I’m sure there’s going to be more than one of these posts, particularly  given Madame Bibliophile Recommends’ novella a day back in May 2018 , then this year’s selection lengthened my tbr list. The first task is to define a novella, something which varies from reader to reader, but for the purposes of this post

Five Novellas I’ve Read Read More »

Cover image

Madame Bovary of the Suburbs by Sophie Divry (transl. Alison Anderson): A Flaubert homage

It’s been a very long time since I read Flaubert’s tale of a doctor’s wife, bored to tears by provincial life and seeking diversion in adultery, but not so long since I read Sophie Divry’s slightly eccentric debut, The Library of Unrequited Love which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s always a risky business when an author

Madame Bovary of the Suburbs by Sophie Divry (transl. Alison Anderson): A Flaubert homage Read More »