Tag: austrian fiction

The Cafe with no Name by Robert Seethaler

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The Cafe with no Name by Robert Seethaler

Austrian fiction

Original title – Das Café ohne Namen

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – Personal copy

I am having a quieter German lit month this year. I am just reviewing a few books, and this is set in Vienna, where the writer is from. I have reviewed two earlier books by Robert Seethaler. I see on the book cover that this was a best-selling book for a long time. That made me wonder what makes different books and writers more and less successful around Europe and what type of books are popular with readers. I think Seethaler captures the other side of human life in his fellow Austrian writer, Thomas Bernhard. This is a group of people, but their lives are looked at; they could have come from the cheap eaters, but this is a more compassionate look at the people you may see in a market Cafe.

Robert Simon opened his café at twelve noon on the dot.

The first customer came in less than ten minutes later.

Simon knew him vaguely; he was a fruit grower from the Wachau who sometimes rented a gap between the stalls on the eastern side to sell his apricots straight out of a basket. He sat down at one of the outside tables and fixed doleful eyes on the pavement.

‘What can I get you? Simon asked, an apron tied around his waist and a pencil behind his ear. The fruit grower looked surprised.

‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You work on the market.’

‘Not any more,’ said Simon.

‘What have you got? the man asked.

‘Coffee. Lemonade. Raspberry soda, beer, and wine from Stammersdorf and Gumpoldskirchen, red or white.

To eat, there’s bread and dripping with or without onions, freshly pickled gherkins or pretzel sticks??

‘Not a lot.’

‘It’s the first day. Anyway, it’s a café, not a restaurant.?

The first day of the cafe!

The book, as I said, is set in the mid-sixties through about a decade. It follows the years, Robert Simon, a man who had just lost his job in the market, when he is pointed out a cafe that hasn’t been open in years so when he gets the lease and opens it we meet those who come and go other the years into the cafe with no name as he initially he has no name for the cafe. The book sees the struggles when he opens the Cafe shortly after this Mila, a country girl who had headed to the city for work as a seamstress hads lost her job she was never great at her old job so when she fell and was taken into the cafe by the neighbour of the cafe, The Butcher a Johanes  Luckily, Robert talks about how hard it is, and she is put forward as a waitress for him. The book follows both Robert and Mila. As trade dries up in a winter he offers punch a wrestle Rene comes ion to the cafe more. He likes Mila. ADD to that other customers like an elderly couple, a widow, a man taken on as a handyman, and over the years ,we see the comings and goings of relationships start and fail, all connected to the cafe.

Mila was robust by nature. What she lacked in skill and dexterity in comparison to the other factory girls, she made up for in tenacity and diligence. She was reliable, wouldn’t get into escapades and, above all, steered clear of trade unions. If she went on that way, the deputy engineering manager Herr Steinwender said, she might even one day get a promotion to a full seamstress or – who could say what might be possible? – head seamstress.

Six days a week, Mila took the company-owned diesel bus to Floridsdorf in the early hours, bent low all day long over her juddering Singer machine in Hall 2, Row V, and was driven back home with a stiff back and aching fingers, only to make herself supper and get an early night.

Mila wasn’t a made seamstress but works as a waitress most of the time

I mentioned Bernhards as the Cheap eaters was something I thought about whilst reading this book, another group of people hard on luck but this is a look at the highs and lows nbut without the acid nature oifBernhard no there is something about the way Seethaler found dignity and beauty in the everyday action of these cafe customers and staff in the corner of a market over the decade or so as Post war Austria of the sixties turns the corner. The seventies come in, but this is a place caught in that changing world around them. There is something extraordinary about how Seethaler deals with his world. Bad things happen, but this is like the Sunday evening drama as we used to have bad things happen, but it is how it is told with that sort of nostalgic feel to it. This is called The Midwife, but in a Viennese market cafe. A cafe owner, a waitress, and the customers make up for the nurses and patients as we view the vignettes of their lives over the years. Have you read this book or any of his other books?

 

Yellow Street by Veza Canetti

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Yellow Street by Veza Canetti

Austrian fiction

Original title  – Die gelbe Straße

Translator Ian Mitchell

Source – Personal copy

I have moved to Austria on my tour around the world for this year’s Women in Translation Month, and I am a writer whose husband was more famous than her. Veza Canetti is the wife of the Nobel winner Elias Canetti, a writer whose books I have loved. She had published the odd story here and there in her lifetime with pseudonyms as he stories were considered left-wing and satirical at the time. She had also translated Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys, a writer I want to read. I have that book by him on my TBR. What this collection of tales by her did was capture the street she grew up on in Vienna, a working-class Jewish street. In a way, this is a testament to a place that, shortly after she wrote the stories, was no longer there.In post-war Vienna, we head down the darker and less known side of the city in the thirties!

One day, as Runkel was being pushed across the street in her perambulator, she was overcome by such despair over her wretched life that she wanted nothing more than for a heavy lorry, a cattle truck, a thousand-kilo road-roller or a tram with three trailers to run over her horrible body and crush it. So she gave the maid Rosa, who for years had looked after her, nursed her, carried her from her pram into her flat, from the flat to the pram, quite meaningless signals, distracted, nervous signals, as to how she was to cross the street, she confused her with angry interjections to such an extent that there was indeed a collision, with a motor-cycle that came racing past.

Only, this motor-cycle mangled not Runkel but the serving-maid Rosa, for, at literally the last moment of her life, this loyal soul pushed the pram containing the cripple abruptly forward, shielded it with her own body and so brought about her own death. Runkel, however, lay on the ground, with both her arms broken, for the twelfth time in her life she had suffered broken limbs, usually it was her legs. which hung down short and lifeless like those of a jumping jack.

The opening story

The book is a collection of five stories that are all set around the people who live and work in Yellow Street, a jews street full of poverty, the working-class disabled and people down on their luck for various reasons. So we have the disabled Frau Runkel in a wheelchair with her arms broken, a broken woman, a vision of absolute despair, wishing for the end of her life, which has a tragic twist involving Rosa, a Maid. The Herr Vik, a tobacconist who has an almost autistic routine in his life, a feeling of OCD in his tale of a man drawn by routines. He is the last story; these two people bookend a series of stories of a poor Jewish neighbourhood in the 1930s in Vienna.

Herr Vik, his jaws working busily, hurries along Yellow Street, getting very agitated over the bales of leather being unloaded and the crowds of people that are in his way today; Herr Vik can no longer go out without his walking stick, so filthy has the street been made by dogs, and Herr Vik is busy shoving just such a yellow mess out of his path when up runs Hedi with a yellow book and a collecting-tin.

Hedi knows Herr Vik, because her mother does the cleaning for him. Herr Vik rushes past her, but Hedi is not going to be easily deterred. ‘Herr Vik! Herr VIk!’ she calls and holds out her little book to him. With a jolt, Herr VIk stops, takes the yellow book, reads it very carefully, gives it back to Hedi and rushes off again.

He hurries along, and the farther he runs, the greater becomes his annoyance, for more and more people get in his way; the whole street is mad today, they’re all mad today, but they won’t get anywhere with him, nobody’s going to deprive him of his freedom. And he forces his way through, laying about him, so that people move aside in alarm. Outside the Café Planet he comes to a halt, then bolts inside.

Herr Vik made an impression on me

This book captures the underbellyof Vienna we rarely see , I think these are the same characters many yer later Thomas Bernhard woukd write about in his book the cheap eater those just getting by or not getting by at all like the disable Frau Rinkel in the first story the cloud of wehat happens in the thirties althopugh never really mention seeps into the tales and the down oan out folks the flotsam and Jetsom of the city we never really seen in other books. She captures the streets she grew up on and also moved away from those she left behind, as shown in these five short stories. She has a compassionate look at these individuals, and one feels these were people she would have seen. I felt this especially with Herr Vik a man who then would seem odd with his quirks and routines, but now would be maybe seen as neurodivergent. I am pleased someone chose to publish her work as she would just have been known as his Elias’s wife and occasional translator, not a writer with a sharp eye for the human condition and capturing a world that is sadly gone now. Have you read her book or any of the husbands or wives of other writers?

The Waterfalls of Slunj by Heimito Von Doderer

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The Waterfalls of Slunj by Heimito Von Doderer

Austrian Fiction

Original title – Die Wasserfälle Von Slunj

Translators – Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser

Source – Personal copy

I’m back on with a classic, I will still be trying to read mainly classic this year. Oddly, today is the first day I have felt my usual bookish self this year. This year, I have struggled to read, blog, and use social media. So I was so happy I managed to sit earlier and read under pages in a coffee shop. Thought about the upcoming weeks. One of the books I struggled to get through this year was by Austrian writer Heimito Von Doderer. He was born into a privileged family at the time, one of the wealthiest families in Austria. I have two other books, the one that came out from NYRB a while ago and the genuinely epic two-volume The Demons, which was republished by an American publisher and has over 1000 pages. This book was meant to be a multi-volume series, but he only wrote this, and the second volume was published after he died. So we are thrown into The Tale, the end of the Austor Hungarian Empire. The book was meant to be seven books from 1880 – 1960, but only the first two were released.

However, all these rather grand houses, each standing alone at the edge of the grassy park, suffered from the same fundamental trouble. They were damp. Their basements were dank as dungeons. But just at this time, when the Claytons settled down here, a Vienna firm put on the market a drying-stove of a new design. The poster by means of which this new product was brought to the public notice was terrifying. It showed the new stove standing in the gloom of a cellar, its maw fiery; from the left and the right side of the stove there grew arms with fists uplifted; and from this monster panic-stricken toadstools and mildewy hobgoblins were fleeing, their faces contorted with mortal fear, while the wildly flickering rays of ferocious heat from the stove’s mouth pursued them in their headlong flight, decimating them. One could scarcely help feeling sorry for these doomed creatures, these little galloping fungus legs, wailing toadstools, and hurrying vapors. That poster of the stove with the threatening, whirling fists was to be seen in Vienna for many years. It was still there in the time of little Donald Clayton.

Grand House was a world the writer grew up in !

The book follows the Claytons and the English industrialist family trying to set up and move into the Austro-Hungarian with their new Office in Vienna. Along with this, the title of the book comes from the fact. Early in the book, Robert and Harriet, the parents of the two main characters, their sons Robert and Donald, spend the Honeymoon at the Hotel at the Falls, located in Croatia. This book sees the sons setting up the factory and the people working in the factory [particularly Chwostik, the deputy director of the Factory, who used to live with p[prostitutes. The factory makes agricultural machinery and, in some shadow,s actual companies working there at the time. It captures the later end of the 19th century as the world suddenly sped up. As we see how, all, this world is a lot of characters and, in a way, memories of the time. It all stems from the Claytons, the father and his sons.An epic book that also has a bit of humour at times and sees a world long gone and, as it was happening, was doomed, which I love to read.

At this point in developments a gingerly key was inserted into the lock (Münsterer always went about very quietly here, without himself knowing why; perhaps it was a sort of echo of his reverence for Chwostik that made him behave in this way).

He did of course also hear the voices that came from the room now his, for the door was open. At the same instant he realized, in retrospect, that the front door had opened when he had turned the key once; so it had only been shut, not locked. He could hear his stepmother talking. She had simply walked into his room with someone (new tenant?), and there she was talking; and he came slinking in like a dog. Now he could make out what she was saying: “… yes, that’s how it is, sir, it’s for my stepson, who lives with us, and us having no room for ourselves as it is. He wants to get married. In the post office, he is.”

But our poor Münsterer did not merely slink, he also kept his mouth shut. He was an underling of caretakerdom, the advance guard of caretakerdom, a pawn in Frau Wewerka’s sphere of influence (homo conciergificatus Wewercae

Chwostik the depty from the factory is anothher main character part from the Claytons

I think this is one of those books you drift in. It has a style that drifts like memories can drift. There is a feeling of Freud in the background of the book. It is one of those books in a notebook that is handy with the characters to keep track of them. But also, it is a world that is now gone. It uses both the personal world of the Claytons and the dying Empire like the river that follows over the fall clashing and mixing this is a book that was the start of what would have been a truly epic book I feel it captures the world before world war one. This book captures the historical and societal changes around the Claytons. Have you read any of his books?

The Lime Works by Thomas Bernhard

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The Lime Works by Thomas Bernhard

Austrian fiction

Original title – Das Kalkwerk

Translator – Sophie Wilkins

Source – Personal copy

When I first read the list of books for 1970, I thought I read this, but I didn’t want to get a secondhand copy as they were a little pricey. I then saw it is available as a Kindle book which I rarely use so it meant I got use it I do have a couple of Bernhard’s I haven’t read on my shelves as I still thinking of doing another Thomas Bernhard week. This was his third novel, and alongside a play he had staged that year, he won the Georg Buchner Prize in 1970. I feel this had some of the pieces from later books, most of which I have read by him. It focuses on the line works and opens with a woman dead shoot and her brains all over the floor of the Lime Works.

If only he could get his book written before he grew too old, absolutely too old and unfit to write it, he is supposed to have said to Fro and to Wieser. The minute he got to his room he went to bed. But the inner restlessness into which he was driven by the outward quiet would not let him sleep even when mortally ex-hausted, and so he wandered all over the lime works, several times all over the lime works, and spent the rest of the night lying on his bed quite unable to fall asleep. Once you have passed that boundary line between fatigue and exhaustion, it is absurd to believe that you can fall asleep, absurd to try to sleep, to force yourself to sleep; you weren’t going to fall asleep. In-stead, he got the opposite of the hoped-for re-laxation, the serenity he meant when he dreamed of finding a quiet place to work; instead of being able to relax, he only grew increasingly restless, so restless that he inevitably broke his own rest by doing something or other that brought unrest into it.

We know he never quite gets to finish his book

The lime work then works to how that happened, and we meet the husband, Konard a man who has spent several years working on his scientific opus, a book called The Sense of Hearing (Odd I thought of the Herzog film of that time, the land of silence which came out a year after this book ). We meet his wife, the woman killed at the start of the book, but this is a grim world of a man who does nothing. He has spent twenty years writing or not writing the book whilst living in the Lime Works he brought with the last of his money. Add to this the locals to the lime works, and we have a slow-moving, menacing account of a man descending into a hell that could be rather like a factory that was also a concentration camp. We know little other than the ins and outs of their life and never described much of what the pair of them are like other than the wife being wheelchair-bound. A nod to his medical issues, maybe the whole atmosphere feels like a world collapsing on the two of them.

it. People don’t instinctualize any longer, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, mankind no longer instinctualizes. Aha, so that’s the idyll the Konrad couple have moved into, they may think, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, but in reality the Konrad couple, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, moved into quite the opposite of an idyll when they moved into the lime works.

The return to an idyll, they think. Compared with the lime works, everything else is idyllic, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro, London is an idyll compared with the lime works, Wuppertal is an idyll; the ugliest, the loudest, the most malodorous place is an idyll in comparison. But even the surroundings of the lime works have been deliberately falsified into an idyll. An intelligent person arriving in the area, of course, will realize at once that the place is no idyll,

I cut it ioff there as the last word the lime r=works was no idyil thou ot was meant be capture a loty of what i meant about the place as a character in the book

 

This has at its heart the character that would go on to a stock character for Bernhard in Konrad, a man full of bile and hatred. Here it is both at the way his life has gone. There is a sense of inertia in his life twenty years of writing a book that hasn’t moved on in the two decades he has tried to write it . Then, his wife echoes Bernhard’s own medical issues that, in the end, would see his life cut short. Then there is the place itself. The Lime Works is a grim-sounding place he has brought that, like the pair at the heart of the book, seems to draw out the worst of those around it, like the ghosts of those who had worked and maybe even died there are there dragging those in the present down weighting them down if that makes sense. This is a tense book of a couple falling apart a man losing his grip on the world. I still have Frost his debut to read, but this seems like a writer who has honed the Konrad character in his later books. This is like the Mark One Bernhard male character soon to be replaced by the Austrian-hating Mark Two of the later books her would write like The Correction and Woodcutters. A great fourth book for this week’s club1970! Have you read this or any books by Bernhard?

 

 

Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth

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Weights and Measures by Joesph Roth

Austrian fiction

Original title – Das falsche Gewicht 

Translator – David Le Vay

Source – Personal copy

I looked at the Goodreads list of books for 1937. I’m unsure if I missed this or if it wasn’t on the list of books for the year. I looked on my shelves to see if any writers I liked had missed the list, and I found this one. I am a fan of Joseph Roth, who is most well-known for The Radetzky March. In a way, all his books are around the Austro-Hungarian empire. Here is a perfect example of that: we follow a marriage falling apart, and in that, it seemed an ideal bookend to the last book I reviewed, The Start of a Marriage Going Wrong by another short lived writer. Because Roth, like Szerb, died in World War Two, he was a more problematic drinker and had just heard of the death of Ernst Toller when he died a few days later.

Once upon a time in the District of Zlotogrod there lived an Inspector of Weights and Measures whose name was Anselm Eibenschütz. His duty consisted of checking the weights and measures of the tradesmen in the entire district. So, at specified intervals, Eibenschütz went from shop to shop and investigated the yardsticks and the scales and the weights. He was accompanied by a sergeant of gendarmerie in full panoply. Thus the State made manifest its intention to use arms, if necessary, to punish cheats, in accordance with the commandment proclaimed in the Holy Scrip-tures, which considers a cheat to be the same as a thief…

The introduction to the weights and measure officer of the title in the first page.

The book follows an Artillery officer, Anselm Elbenshchutz. He has taken a job in a small town near the Russian border, working for the government as a weights and measures officer, checking that everyone is doing it right.. But what happens when this man, a gentleman and officer with his principles, tries to lay the line of the law in this place where all he sees is people bending the rules and those near him taking bribes. He makes enemies, but when his wife, who made him move, has an affair with one of his clerks and becomes pregnant, he is drawn to a beautiful, mysterious Gypsy, Euphemia. She lives with one of the men he has most upset, Jadlowker, a profiteer. He tries to make money here and there. And as his world falls apart, we see how a good man ends up in a border area as people escape Russia. His wife then gets Caught up in the cholera outbreak in the area and dies with the Baby she has conceived with Anselm’s clerk. We see the spirit of the man broken. A motif and character that Roth has done well in the other books I have read over the years by Roth.

Eibenschütz looked at her constantly. He tried to catch her eye at least once, but he did not succeed. Her eyes were wandering somewhere in the distance. God alone knew what she was thinking about!

They resumed their game and Eibenschütz won a number of hands. He was a little shamefaced as he pocketed the money. And still Euphemia sat at the table, a silent flower. She glowed and remained silent.

All around there was the usual noise, caused by the deserters.

They crouched on the floor and played cards and threw dice. As soon as they had gambled everything away they began to sing. As usual, they sang the song Ja lubyl tibia’, out of tune and with croaking voices.

The Russian deserters that come across the border to his area and the Gpysy girl he falls for

Anselm, as a person who took the weights and measures job, was what would have at one time in the UK been called a Jobsworth. He’d been on the TV show That’s Life as someone who followed the line of the law to the point. But what follows is what happens to be hidden closed doors, those little bribes that, if unchecked, like here, where he lives, grow over time and what, when he arrives, seems an easy job. It isn’t, and as his world falls apart, as I say, this is a character Robert wrote well the fallen man as a character wife having an affair enemies everywhere. A love that is with his enemies this is a man in freefall as we see all around him turn bad and his world falls apart. All this is a short novella, a lesser-known book by Roth. The place he evokes is like an Austrian Cornwall of those smugglers and people trying to make a living on the other side of the law. Borders often have this dark side, even if a few things are cheaper over the border or the world seems better over the border. Well this is my third book for club1937 and a book that isn’t as well known as his other books. Have you read Roth?

Winstons score –A solid little novella from one of the great Austrian writers

A whole life by Robert Seethaler

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A Whole life by Robert Seethaler

Austrian fiction

Original title – Ein ganzes Leben

Translator – Charlotte Collins

Source – Library book

Every year on the Old IFFP and now on the first man booker there is a book on the list that I hadn’t heard of and a writer that is new to me and this was this years book. Robert Seethaler is an austrian writer, the german wiki page says he has sight problems so went to a school for the blind. Then drama school , he is an actor as well as a scriptwriter. He has also written five novels this is his fifth novel.His first to be translated . I am pleased to see his fourth novel The tobacconist is in the pipeline to be translated.

 In 1910 a school was built in the village, and every morning, after tending to the livestock, little Egger sat with the other children, in a classroom that stank of fresh tar, learning reading, writing and arithmetic. He learned slowly and as if against a hidden inner resistance, but over time a kind of meaning began to crystallize out of the chaos of dots and dashes on the school blackboard until at last he was able to read books without pictures, which awoke in him ideas and also certain anxieties about the worlds beyond the valley.

I was reminded of the Herzog actor Bruno S a man who never is in time with the world either .

I must admit I am so pleased this was on the longlist as it may have passed me by maybe until,a german lit month. This book is the story of one mans life Andreas Egger a man who arrives and then spend the rest of his life in one small mountain valley. This is the early 20th century and the world Andreas is living in is slowly giving way to the modern world as we see through his eyes bit by bit his life but the world he lives in getting to grips with the modern world. From his arrival to work on his uncles farm where he first met the woman he loves over time Marie but this is a love that will never be.So as Andreas First build cable cars, then help electricity then the war take him away from the farm and the valley he always come back to the world he is meant to be in. As much as he tried to escape .

That was in the late fifties. It was only much later, in the summer of 1969, that Egger had a second encounter with the television – which in most households by then already constituted the central focus and primary purpose of the evening family gathering – that made a profound impression on him, albeit in an entirely different way. This time he was sitting with almost a hundred and fifty other villages in the assembly room of the new parish hall, watching two young americans walk on the moon for the first time.

A world no gone without tv or wanting to see a tv Eggger is really a man out of time in his valley .

I must admit I loved this book  it is a really pretty gem. I was reminded of  one of my favourite books Stones in a landslide Andreas life and the way he lives in the valley that is sort of out of time with the world around them remind me of the world in Stones in a landslide. I also pictured this in a way as being a lost script for a Werner  Herzog film on the other hand Andreas is a simple man like most of the classic roles in the 70’s Herzog films, a man who has the world against him in the way like the classic Bruno S films  Herzog made . A beautiful world of the valley is like quicksand slowly killing the man but not just the man but also his spirit is slowly dragged into the ground of the valley.As for man booker I feel the simple sparse nature of the narrative that as the Irish times review saaid remind that review of Stoner as for me I felt this is a better book than Stoner which I may be the one person that felt stoner was like a  afternoon film of one mans life. No egger is a character you believe in he is like a man in the background of Heidi brought to the fore.

Have you read this book ?

Journey into the past by Stefan Zweig

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journey into the past

Journey into the past by Stefan Zweig

Austrian fiction

Original title –  Widerstand der Wirklichkeit

Translator – Anthea Bell

Source – Personnel copy

I couldn’t do two weeks about Pushkin press without at least once reviewing or mentioning Stefan Zweig ,as he is the writer most associated with them in my mind anyway .I have perviously reviewed his books Letter to an Unknown women   and although not published by Pushkin press the post office girl .I have also read Amok for this fortnight .In my mind Zweig is a true one-off writer that thanks to Pushkin we have gotten to read in English .At the height of his fame in the 1920’s and 1930’s he was one of the best known writers in the world .This is one of a number of books by Stefan Zweig that is published by Pushkin press .

“There you are !” He went to meet her with arms outstretched , almost flung wide.”There you are ” he repeated , his voice climbing the scale from surprise to delight ever more clearly ,while his tender glance lingered on her beloved form “I was almost afraid you wouldn’t come !”

“Do you really have so little faith in me ? ”

Ludwig arrives and meets the woman in the opening lines

So too the Journey into the past was only discovered in the seventies and published in the Germany .Ludwig is German engineer and in love with a women whom happens to be married ,but he is sent for a short trip to Mexico to work on opening a mine ,but whilst he is doing this the first world war breaks out leaving him stranded in Mexico .We see him recalling the past as he returns to see if his love is still there what has happened to her .As he travels back to his homeland the memories of their  past  as they await meeting again on the station . The narrative drifts through time past and present mingle .

They left the station , but no sooner were they out of the door than stormy noise met their ears , drums rattling , the shrill sound of pipes – it was a patriotic demonstration of veterans  associations and students in support of the Fatherland .Like a wall on the move ,marching in ranks four abreast ,flags flying ,men in military garb were goose stepping along ,feet thudding heavily on the ground .

The early signs of the Nazis and Ludwig and the woman leave the station .

Well this was a book that supposedly Zweig had worked and reworked this novella for over twenty years ,you can see how it has been cut and edited at just 81 pages it actually feels more like a 300 page novel than a short novella .Zweig has left fact bare and concentrated on the feeling ,memories and broken love  and dreams .Ludwig was a different character than I had previously encountered in Zweig works as in the previous book I have read he has mainly used female characters .I loved the sense of lose and longing we got from Ludwig a man caught by time ,the woman isn’t named we know she is married to a councillor so is maybe an older muse for the young Ludwig whom is in his mid twenties .You also see the changing times and how Zweig worked more recent times into the narrative like the fact when Ludwig arrives back there is a nazi parade taking place almost a small signpost to the future events that drew Austria into the second world war .If you love a tale of lost dreams and loves and longing this is one that you will love .

Have you read Zweig ,if so which is you favourite book ?

The Confusions of young Törless by Robert Musil

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the confusions of young Törless

The Confusions of young Törless by Robert Musil

Austrian fiction

Translator Mike Mitchell

Orginal title – Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß

Source – review copy

I have read Musil many years ago I was lucky to buy cheap copies of his huge epic the man without qualities .So had this one on my list of books to try especially as this year sees it’s a hundred year since the start of world war one .Robert Musil  is an Austrian writer ,he went to military school from 12- 17 ,after that went to study engineering then drifted into studying Philosophy and through that decide to write The confusion of young  Törless was his Debut novel .He did serve in the first world war and went on after the war to write his epic The man without qualities .

The closely woven veil of Frau Törless – the lady of around forty – concealed sad eyes , slightly reddened from crying .For now she had to say goodbye  .And it was hard for her to have to abandon her only child for so long to strangers ,unable to watch over her darling and protect him herself .

We see young Törless leaving effect on his mother .

Törless is a young boy when the book opens we see him with his parents waiting for the train to take him to Military school .We see him at first upset ,but then settle in and make friends at the school .But him and his two friends Beineberg and Reiting see a fellow cadet Basini steal from them ,they then decide to judge this boy themselves and descend into a a violent retribution on him .Basini is in love with Törless thou .Törless feels sorry for him in the end and tells him to own up to what he had done .Elsewhere we see Törless have a sexual awakening with a local women ( well lady of the night ) ,also his parents and how they have affect his view of the world from their own view of the world .

Beineberg continued his line of thought ” I think that for the moment we’ll keep him to ourselves – and punish him ourselves .For he has to be punished , for his arrogance if for nothing else .At most the school authorities would expel him and write a long letter to his uncle

The moment the boys take the law into their own hands .

Well this is a new translation pof the book from Oxford world classics and I can see why they have chosen now to do it the book was written in 1906 . But the events attitudes and views seen in the book can actually explain the events of the next forty years in both Austria and Germany .In fact the attitudes at times remind me of some of the fall out that had surround the Dreyfus affair ,which had been a scandal all over Europe when it happened in 1894 and was strangely finally sorted in 1906 around the time Musil had finished this book ,like that true life affair it showed a dark underbelly in certain people and certain classes of people at the time and that is Fascism  and racism .The views and attitudes shown in the book show why Austria and Germany descend into first into world war One the feeling of over bearing superiority  ,then as a knock on effect will lead to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis .A wonderful time to reissue this book. The book embodies part of what Golding showed in the Lord of the Flies how easily young men can divide and sub divided and make many violent acts  .Musil denied that the book was autobiographical mainly due to the heavy sexual content in it ,but one wonders how much else was from  what he saw and experienced at the time ?

Have you a favourite read that shows the build up to World war One ?