The Loft

An Austrian housewife sits in her loft intent on her drawings of birds and insects. Then one day a disturbing package arrives in the post... The loft is her retreat, a place she can draw undisturbed, hidden away even from her own family. But the arrival of the parcel threatens her fragile equilibrium. It contains extracts from the narrator''s diary, written twenty years before. They date back to a time when she was sent away by her husband to a remote cottage in a bid to ''cure'' her from unexplained sudden deafness. More mysterious packages arrive. Who is sending them? And what did happened all those years ago in the forest? ''A thrilling novel... What gives this book its tremendous power? First the voice is charming, with a skittish beauty throughout... But there is also disarming honesty, and a lack of vanity, which appeals as only truth can'' John Self, Guardian TRANSLATED BY AMANDA PRANTERA

About the author

Marie Helene Haushofer was born in Frauenstein, Austria in 1920. Following the Second World War, she worked in her husband's dentistry practice. She began publishing short stories in magazines from 1946. She enjoyed success with her novella The Fifth Year, which was published in 1952 but her most enduring work was The Wall, first published in 1963 and now considered a classic of dystopian fiction. She died in 1970.

Product details

• Authors: Marlen Haushofer, Haushofer Marlen
• Assisted by: Amanda Prantera (Translation), Prantera Amanda (Translation)
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Release: 02.07.2026
• EAN: 9781529953480
• ISBN: 978-1-5299-5348-0
• No. of pages: 192
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 198 mm x 15 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; austria, FICTION / Women, FICTION / Literary, Diaries, letters & journals, FICTION / Classics, Classic fiction (pre c 1945), FICTION / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce, Fiction in translation, FICTION / Small Town & Rural, FICTION / World Literature / Austria, Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction, Classic fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Published diaries, letters and journals