Read more
If the dead could speak, what would they say to the living?
From their graves in the field, the oldest part of Paulstadt's cemetery, the town's late inhabitants tell stories from their lives. Some recall just a moment, perhaps the one in which they left this world, perhaps the one that they now realize shaped their life forever. Some remember all the people they've been with, or the only person they ever loved.
These voices together - young, old, rich poor - build a picture of a community, as viewed from below ground instead of from above. The streets of the small, sleepy provincial town of Paulstadt are given shape and meaning by those who lived, loved, worked, mourned and died there.
From the author of the Booker International-shortlisted A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler's The Field is about what happens at the end. It is a book of human lives - each one different, yet connected to countless others - that ultimately shows how life, for all its fleetingness, still has meaning.
About the author
Robert Seethaler was born in Vienna in 1966 and is the author of several novels including A Whole Life and The Tobacconist. A Whole Life was a top ten-bestseller in Germany, and has garnered huge acclaim.Charlotte Collins studied English at Cambridge University. She worked as an actor and radio journalist in both Germany and the U.K. before becoming a literary translator. She has translated work by Robert Seethaler and Nino Haratischwili.
Summary
If the dead could speak, what would they say to the living?
From their graves in the field, the oldest part of Paulstadt’s cemetery, the town’s late inhabitants tell stories from their lives. Some recall just a moment, perhaps the one in which they left this world, perhaps the one that they now realize shaped their life forever. Some remember all the people they’ve been with, or the only person they ever loved.
These voices together – young, old, rich poor – build a picture of a community, as viewed from below ground instead of from above. The streets of the small, sleepy provincial town of Paulstadt are given shape and meaning by those who lived, loved, worked, mourned and died there.
From the author of the Booker International-shortlisted A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler’s The Field is about what happens at the end. It is a book of human lives – each one different, yet connected to countless others – that ultimately shows how life, for all its fleetingness, still has meaning.
Foreword
The acclaimed author of A Whole Life and The Tobacconist, the bestselling and Booker International-shortlisted Robert Seethaler, tells the story of a town through the voices from its graveyard: a moving story about life and death and human connection.
Additional text
The whole thing is so wonderfully crafted . . . that you literally don't want to stop reading, that you're sad to come to the end . . . What he has mastered like few other authors in German literary history is to give all his characters a profound dignity.
Report
One of those rare novels that can move you existentially, and change you. SWR
