Though the First World War left him with only one leg, Trsnyek is a firebrand. “In mind’s eye the future appeared like the line of a far distant shore materializing out of the morning fog: still a little blurred and unclear, but promising and beautiful, too.” Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel’s life changes for good when his mother sends him away from his quiet lakeside village to work for her old friend Otto Trsnyek, a Vienna tobacconist. There’s a great avalanche scene, though.”īut I’m very glad that I tried again with Seethaler, because The Tobacconist is one of the few best novels I’ve read this year, and very much a book for our times despite being set in 1937–8. I have trouble pinpointing why Stoner is a masterpiece whereas this is just kind of boring. Various things happen to him, most of them bad. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time: “This novella set in the Austrian Alps is the story of Andreas Egger – at various times a farmer, a prisoner of war, and a tourist guide. I’d read so much praise for its sparse style, but I couldn’t grasp the appeal. You may recall that I read Seethaler’s previous novel, A Whole Life, on my European travels this past summer, and didn’t think too much of it. I don’t participate in a lot of blogger challenges (though I’ll be doing “Novellas in November” on Monday) it’s more of a coincidence that I finished Austrian writer Robert Seethaler’s excellent The Tobacconist (translated from the German by Charlotte Collins) towards the end of German literature month.
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