2023-09-14 14:13:57
Robert Seethaler is a writer that listeners may know since four of his novels have already been translated into French, all published by Sabine Wespieser. And we can, thanks to this same publishing house, discover this literary season the latest novel by the Austrian author, which is entitled The nameless cafe, beautifully translated by Élisabeth Landes and Herbert Wolf. The book, which appeared in German last spring, met with great success in Austria and Germany, the two countries in which Robert Seethaler lives today.
Back to the origins
In this book the author returns to his Viennese origins, since the plot begins in 1966, the year of Robert Seethaler’s birth and takes place in Vienna, the city where he was born. We follow a terribly endearing character, Robert Simon, a man with a lean physique, a weathered face and deep blue eyes. Day laborer at the Carmelite market, a poor neighborhood in the second Viennese district, Robert Simon decides one day to take over the abandoned café on the square. Why does he do it? Maybe because he “hope must prevail a little over worry”as the war widow with whom he shared an apartment said to him one evening.
A refuge café overtaken by modernity
This café, which will remain nameless, will soon welcome a crowd of regulars, marginalized people, penniless workers, women and men tested by life, who seek to escape their boredom or their loneliness. Over the years, the café becomes a refuge that welcomes this touching little company, a place that distracts, soothes, and perhaps also repairs. But the big society is changing. Vienna, which is a character in its own right in the book, is transformed, falling into modernity, which will ultimately get the better of the café. “The world keeps turning faster“, writes Robert Seethaler “and among those whose lives do not weigh heavily enough, there are some who are left on the side of the road.”
Delicate and melancholy writing
In a few words, by capturing a detail, a sensation, a moment, the Austrian author plunges us into the interiority of his characters with empathy and sensitivity. We come across, throughout the pages, a young couple who are struggling to get over the death of their child, an old lady who spends her nights “lying down spying on her memories” or even a handyman with a bit of a thug, who dies without anyone or almost anyone remembering him. The nameless café becomes, under Seethaler’s pen, the place where anonymous people with damaged lives meet and in this very meeting the characters find a little warmth, and something that resembles hope, like the boss, Robert Simon who surprises himself “chase away (s)old ghosts and (open) the door to something new.“
This is in fact what made Robert Seethaler successful: this tender, melancholy writing, which highlights those we call “the little people”, these people who, as the author writes, “have things to say but don’t speak”. This is the common thread of all his work and what gives him a special place in German-speaking literature. He indeed enjoyed great critical and public success in Austria and Germany, where he sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books.
A rich and diverse contemporary Austrian literature
Robert Seethaler’s work has been translated into forty languages and has also enjoyed great success abroad. But Austrian literature is obviously far from being limited to this author. It is incredibly rich and diverse. It is far from being a coincidence that, over the last twenty years, Austria has won two Nobel Prizes for literature with Elfriede Jelinek et Peter Handke. Several other great contemporary Austrian authors are today translated into French and published by several publishing houses, Verdier and Gallimard in particular. So a piece of advice: dive into it, you will discover demanding and inventive literature.
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