A Whole Life
A Novel
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4.7 • 11 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
International Bestseller
Winner of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize
Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award
Longlisted for American Literary Translators Association's Translation Prize in Prose
Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood--his home.
Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The life chronicled in Seethaler's poignant novel is, at first glance, unremarkable: Andreas Egger begins and ends his life in an Alpine valley village, where he arrives after his mother's death in 1902, and to which he returns in 1951, after years as a POW in Russia. Egger, however, contains multitudes: subjected to childhood beatings that leave him with a permanent limp, he stands up to his abusive uncle and goes on to become an expert cable-car company employee, as well as a devoted husband and father. But the mountainous land he loves and through which, in his middle age, he leads groups of hiking tourists is far from serene. The titanic forces of nature and politics determine Egger's arduous course through the 20th century. Not always successfully, Seethaler seeks to avoid sentimentality. Readers will discover in his contained prose a vehicle for keen insight and observation: Egger, touched for the first time by his future wife, experiences "a very subtle pain... more profound than any had encountered," and later, watching the Moon landing with his neighbors in their new parish hall, he feels "mysteriously close and connected to the villagers down here on the darkened Earth." Nearing his end, Egger "couldn't remember where he had come from, and ultimately he didn't know where he would go. But he could look back without regret... with a full-throated laugh and utter amazement."
Customer Reviews
A short but endearing read
A refreshing book with and old soul. Like stories of my youth, it is a moving narrative which follows a straightforward storyline told from a single point of view. It is firmly rooted in a sense of place - twentieth century Village life in the German Alps. What I like most is how deftly the author avoids the oft-seen pitfall of inauthentic virtue signaling by telling this story of a simple man living a life which did not often bless him with much fortune. It is an authentically masculine story of a man who lives a life exhibiting strength, joyful in his sense of duty, and just the right amount of assertiveness. I would love to see this book in our high schools.