A Whole Life: A Novel

By Robert Seethaler

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Sep 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9780374715373

Robert Seethaler

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.

Book preview

A Whole Life

On a February morning in the year 1933 Andreas Egger lifted the dying goatherd Johannes Kalischka, known to all the valley dwellers as Horned Hannes, off his sodden and rather sour-smelling pallet to carry him down to the village along the three-kilometre mountain path that lay buried beneath a thick layer of snow.

A strange intuition had prompted him to call on Horned Hannes in his hut, where he found him behind the stove, which had long since gone out, curled up under a heap of old goatskins. The goatherd stared at him out of the darkness, emaciated and ghostly pale, and Egger knew that Death already crouched behind his eyes. He picked him up in both arms like a child and placed him gently on the wooden frame, padded with dry moss, that Horned Hannes had used all his life to carry firewood and injured goats on his back over the hillside. He wrapped a halter around his body, tied it to the frame and pulled the knots so tight that the wood let out a crack. When he asked him if he was in pain, Horned Hannes shook his head and twisted his mouth into a grin, but Egger knew that he was lying.

The first weeks of the year had been unusually warm. The snow in the valleys had melted and in the village there was a constant dripping and splashing of meltwater. But a few days earlier it had turned icy-cold again, and the snow fell so thickly and incessantly from the sky that it seemed softly to swallow the landscape, smothering all life and sound. For the first few hundred metres Egger didn’t speak to the trembling man on his back. He had enough to do keeping an eye on the path, which wound down the mountain in front of him in steep hairpin bends and was barely discernible in the driving snow. From time to time he felt Horned Hannes stirring. ‘Just don’t die on me now,’ he said aloud, to himself, not expecting an answer. However, after he had been walking for almost half an hour with only the sound of his own panting in his ears, the answer came from behind: ‘Dying wouldn’t be the worst.’

‘But not on my back!’ said Egger, stopping to adjust the leather straps on his shoulders. For a moment he listened out into the soundlessly falling snow. The silence was absolute. It was the silence of the mountains that he knew so well, but which still had the capacity to fill his heart with fear. ‘Not on my back,’ he repeated, and walked on. After each bend in the path the snow seemed to fall even more thickly, relentlessly, soft and entirely without noise. Behind him Horned Hannes stirred less and less frequently, until at last he didn’t move at all and Egger feared the worst.

‘Are you dead?’ he asked.

‘No, you limping devil!’ came the reply, with surprising clarity.

‘All I mean is, you have to hold on till we get to the village. Then you can do whatever you want.’

‘And what if I don’t want to hold on till we get to the village?’

‘You must!’ said Egger. He felt they’d talked enough now, and for the next half-hour they progressed in silence. Almost three hundred metres above the village, beside the Geierkante, where the first mountain pines stooped like hunchbacked dwarves beneath the snow, Egger strayed from the path, stumbled, landed on the seat of his trousers and slid some twenty metres down the slope before he was stopped by a boulder as tall as a man. It was calm in the lee of the rock, and here the snow seemed to fall even more slowly, even more quietly. Egger sat on his bottom, leaning back slightly against the wooden frame. There was a stabbing pain in his left knee, but it was bearable and his leg was still in one piece. For a while Horned Hannes didn’t move; then suddenly he began to cough and eventually to speak in a hoarse voice so quiet he could barely be understood: ‘Where do you want to lie, Andreas Egger?’

‘What?’

‘What earth do you want to be buried in?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Egger. He had never considered this question, and in fact in his opinion there was no point wasting any time or thought on such things. ‘The earth is the earth; it makes no difference where you lie.’

‘Maybe it makes no difference the way nothing makes any difference in the end,’ he heard Horned Hannes whisper. ‘But there will be a cold. A cold that gnaws the bones. And the soul.’

‘The soul too?’ asked Egger, and a sudden shiver ran down his spine.

‘The soul most of all!’ answered Horned Hannes. He had stretched his head out as far as he could around the edge of the frame and was staring at the wall of fog and falling snow. ‘The soul and the bones and the spirit and everything you’ve been attached to and believed in all your life. The eternal cold will gnaw it all away. That’s what’s written, because that’s what I’ve heard. People say death brings forth new life, but people are stupider than the stupidest nanny goat. I say death brings forth nothing at all! Death is the Cold Lady.’

‘The … what?’

‘The Cold Lady,’ repeated Horned Hannes. ‘She walks on the mountain and steals through the valley. She comes when she wants and takes what she needs. She has no face and no voice. The Cold Lady comes and takes and goes. That’s all. She seizes you as she passes and takes you with her and sticks you in some hole. And in the last patch of sky you see before they finally shovel the earth in over you she reappears and breathes on you. And all that’s left for you then is darkness. And the cold.’

Egger looked up into the snowy sky and for a moment he feared something might appear there and breathe in his face. ‘Jesus,’ he muttered, through clenched teeth. ‘That’s bad.’

‘Yes, it’s bad,’ said Horned Hannes, and his voice sounded raw with fear. Neither man stirred again. The silence was now overlaid by the quiet singing of the wind as it swept over the ridge, dusting up wispy pennants of snow. Suddenly Egger felt a movement, and a moment later he tipped over backwards and lay on his back in the snow. Horned Hannes had somehow managed to loosen the knots and, quick as a flash, clamber out of the frame. He stood there, spindly beneath his ragged clothes and swaying slightly in the wind. Egger shuddered again. ‘You get straight back in,’ he said. ‘You’ll catch something else otherwise.’

Horned Hannes paused, his head craned forward. For a moment he seemed still to be listening to Egger’s words, but the snow had swallowed them. Then he turned and began to run up the mountain in great leaps. Egger struggled to his feet, slipped, fell again, cursing, onto his back, pushed himself up off the ground with both hands and got to his feet once more. ‘Come back!’ he yelled after the goatherd, who was bounding away with astonishing speed. But Horned Hannes could no longer hear him. Egger slipped the straps off his shoulders, dropped the frame and ran after him, but after only a few metres he had to stop, gasping for breath: the slope was too steep here, and with every step he sank up to his hips in the snow. The scrawny figure ahead of him quickly diminished until at last it dissolved entirely in the impenetrable whiteness of the blizzard. Egger put his hands to his mouth like a funnel and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Stop, you stupid fool! No one has ever outrun Death!’ To no avail: Horned Hannes had disappeared.

*   *   *

Andreas Egger walked the last few hundred metres down to the village to revive his profoundly shaken spirits with a bowl of greasy doughnuts and a glass of homemade Krauterer at the Golden Goat inn. He found himself a spot right beside the old tiled stove, placed his hands on the table and felt the warm blood flow slowly back to his fingers. The little door of the stove stood open and the fire crackled inside. For a brief moment he thought he saw the face of the goatherd in the flames, staring out at him, unmoving. Quickly he closed the door and knocked back his schnapps with his eyes screwed tightly shut. When he opened them again a young woman was standing in front of him. She just stood there, hands on her hips, looking at him. Her hair was short and flaxen blond, and her skin shone rosy in the warmth of the stove. Egger was reminded of the newborn piglets he had sometimes picked out of the straw when he was a boy, burying his face in their soft bellies that smelled of earth, milk and pig muck. He glanced down at his hands. Suddenly they seemed strange to him, lying there: heavy, useless and stupid.

‘Another one?’ the young woman asked, and Egger nodded. She brought a fresh glass, and as she leaned forward to put it on the table she touched his upper arm with a fold of her blouse. The touch was barely perceptible, yet it left a subtle pain that seemed to sink deeper into his flesh with every passing second. He looked at her, and she

Reviews for A Whole Life

[castlelass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Quiet and poignant story of the life of one man, Andreas Egger, living in Austria, from around 1900 to 1980. The writing is lovely. It is short, and I think the brevity is intended to convey how quickly a life goes by, even a long life. Egger experiences tragedies and he adapts. He lives a simple life. He only leaves his Austrian village a couple times, one of which was his service in the German army during WWII. Egger lives in the Austrian Alps, and the natural setting is beautifully described. It never delves too deeply into any topic, though, and it seems over too quickly.

[alisony-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Whole Life is a gentle, moving novella about the life of a simple, unremarkable man from the mountains. Told in matter-of-fact prose we journey with him (at some pace) through experiences that shape a lifetime, where tragedy and suffering is met with private forbearance and resignation whilst quietly extinguishing any future hope or expectation of joy.There's more to this slim book than meets the eye, and the more I think about it the more I appreciate just how cleverly it invokes emotion despite it's apparent lack of sentimentality.4 stars - gently moving.

[circlestonesbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Die Geschichte eines einfachen, genügsamen Lebens, in einem Dorf irgendwo in den Alpen - wunderbar erzählt. Ein Buch zum Innehalten und Nachdenken.

[baresi_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Einfach schöne Sprache

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What is a full life? A happy life? This short book covers the lifespan of Andreas Eggers, who leaves his small mountain village only once (to fight in WWII). We meet him as a young orphan who comes to live with his uncle. Andreas works on his uncle's farm, then on his own doing odd jobs. He falls in love, marries, builds a home. Suffers tragedies and set backs, finds companionship, demonstrates occasional heroism. It is these small and relatively large events that make up a life...any life...and this book made me reflect on what it all means.

[padmajoy-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lovely, intimate book about a man's simple life and the beauty it holds for him.

[lord_boris-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A simple, poignant story about one man's life in the Austrian Alps. A short book that packs a punch.

[ebt1002 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Scars are like years, he said: one follows another and it's all of them together that make a person who they are." "You can buy a man's hours off him, you can steal his days from him, or you can rob him of his whole life, but not one can take away from any man so much as a single moment. That's the way it is." This charming short novel, translated from the German, is the story of the life of Andreas Egger, a laborer born in the early part of the 20th century. Told simply and beautifully, the story illuminates the unique and the universal in the human experience, and the simple meaning that exists in the mundane every day. A wonderful antidote to the crazy-busy, noisy, and (sometimes) disconnectedness of modern life.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was a little bit afraid when I started this short novel that it was going to turn out to be Heidi for grown-ups. And indeed, there's a goat-herd on the very first page. But I needn't have worried. As others have said, this is an unusually delicate and subtle narrative that looks for the ordinary behind the extraordinary. Andreas Egger lives in a spectacularly beautiful part of the world and undergoes hardships and experiences that most of us would think of as worthy of an epic with all possible bells and whistles, but what Seethaler wants us to learn about him are the things that make him just like all other human beings who are born, grow up, work, are caught up in the forces of history and nature, work some more, and eventually grow old and die. Sounds corny, and it easily could have been, but it isn't, and I think that means that Seethaler is either an extraordinarily talented or an extraordinarily lucky writer. Probably the former.

[jnwelch_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've been remiss in not reviewing A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler before now. Darryl tipped me off about it. It has been smoothly translated into English from the German by Charlotte Collins. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize.It is a simply, yet powerfully, rendered story of the whole life of Andreas Egger. He's a man of few words, but also, we learn, deeply complex. What he understands best is working.In 1902, at about age four, he arrives in the mountain village where he will spend his life. His relative is a stern, abusive farmer who accepts him from a scandalous sister-in-law for a few bank notes. He beats Andreas for the slightest offense, like spilling milk, and works him hard. But Andreas grows to have enormous strength. At age 18, faced with another brutal punishment, this time for dropping a bowl of soup, he says, "If you hit me, I'll kill you." From then on he is on his own.His good heart and integrity cause other workers take to him. At one point they help him overcome his shyness and make a spellbinding marriage proposal to a woman who works as hard as he does.The mountains surround the reader, and impending avalanches have power. “It was no more than an intimation, a soft whisper stealing around the walls . . . Black clouds were racing across the night sky, a pale, shapeless moon flickering between them.”He survives tragedy, and a prisoner of war camp. As age catches up with him, he becomes a trail guide for tourists, and sees his vivid landscape through their eyes. On a whim, he takes a bus trip out of his village. Where to? “I don’t know . . . I simply don’t know.” Eventually, he can hardly wait to return.This is the story of a man's whole life, without fireworks or a Wellington-sized effect on history. A man worth knowing, who gets back up and adapts when life throws him down. Somehow, the story's simplicity becomes profound, his mountain village haunting, and his acquired wisdom inspiring. This is a beautiful book, one I'll be giving to others.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A quiet gem of a read. When it comes right down to it, what constitutes 'a whole life" Is it our memories, although they change with time? Is it who we have known? Is it the challenges we have faced and the manner in which we have done so? In the end, it seems to me that it is an ephemeral notion, and Robert Seethaler quietly, eloquently, and simply portrays that. He somehow captures the unimportance, yet undeniablility, of the passage of time. He takes the reader into the mind of a man who is deceptively simple, because he is quiet, yet his internal world is vibrant, sensitive, and profound. Lovely story of one man's whole life, which no one can really tell at all.

[wassilissa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Das ist einfaches, dünnes Büchlein. Und doch erzählt es ein "ganzes Leben". Das Leben von Andreas Egger ist einfach, kaum jemals kam er aus seinem Tal in den österreichischen Bergen hinaus, nur einmal, und da ging es in den Krieg. Und Andreas Egger ist ein Geschlagener, ein Getretener. Doch Egger stellt sein Leben nicht in Frage. Es gibt nur einen Moment, der ihn zerbrechen könnte. Und auch hier behält er das, was war, in sich.Insofern ein schönes Buch, weil es einen Menschen porträtiert, der in sich heil geblieben ist, auch wenn er außen gebrochen wurde.Natürlich stellen sich beim Lesen auch kritische Gedanken ein: Was will uns Seethaler damit sagen? Er selber wird ja kaum eine ähnliche Biografie haben. Soll es den Wert des einfachen Lebens preisen, ohne Bildung, sozusagen nur mit Herzensbildung? Denn das Buch lesen werden wohl eher diejenigen, die Andreas Egger in die Berge folgen, die Suchenden, die Intellektuellen, die Unzufriedenen. Wahrscheinlich sind diese Gedanken müßig und man sollte das Buch einfach lesen als das, was es ist: eine gute Geschichte. Tatsächlich hat mich vieles in diesem Buch sehr berührt. Unter anderem fand ich auch hochinteressant, wie sehr der Skitourismus und der Bergtourismus diese Regionen veränderte, wie viele Menschenleben der Bau der Lifte forderte, wie schwierig und auch zerstörerisch er war (und oist).Vieles deutet Seethaler an und betrachtet den Lauf der Welt durch die Augen seines "tumben Toren" Andreas Egger. Geschrieben ist das Buch wunderbar.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This deceptively simple but profoundly moving novella is set in a mountainside village in Germany, and it describes the life of Andreas Egger, an ordinary man who came to the village as a young child after the death of his mother from consumption. Despite being a quiet and obedient boy he is treated brutally by his uncle, a farmer in town, and shunned by the other members of his new family. After enduring years of physical and psychological abuse he is expelled from the farm, and is forced to fend for himself.Andreas is a simple and taciturn man who works hard and asks for little other than a livable wage and a place to lay his head. Despite his near silence and lack of friendship he is observant of his surroundings and holds deep affection for those who positively touch his life. He lives from one day to the next without reflection for the most part, and his life is a struggle to keep moving forward, even when numerous obstacles and tragedies threaten to break his body and spirit. He continues to hold his head up through it all, save for brief moments of sorrow, and as he approaches the end of his life he has no guilt, regrets or fears.I could describe Andreas' story in fuller detail, but that would spoil the joys and surprises of reading A Whole Life that I experienced. This is a remarkable story about an unremarkable man, which manages to be rich in detail and emotion despite being less than 150 pages of widely spaced print. This is easily one of the best novellas I've ever read, and I can't recommended this book highly enough.

[jon1lambert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Andreas Egger ekes out his life in the mountains, seeing and experiencing suffering and tragedy all around him in the natural world, experiencing suffering at war and watching rampant commercialization disrupt the old ways. Wonderful book.

[koanmi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Robert Seethaler erzählt das ganze Leben von Andreas Egger, geboren 1898 (zumindest hat das der Dorfbürgermeister im Nachhinein so festgelegt). Eggers Heimat wird ein Dorf irgendwo in den Bergen, zu den Meilensteinen seines Lebens zählen die Haselnussgerte, eine unendlich große Liebe, eine Lawine, der Seilbahnbau, ein langer Krieg und der lebenslange Drang zu arbeiten. Seethaler erzählt unprätentiös aber in großen Bildern. Seine Sprache ist exakt und doch liebevoll, seine Geschichte(n) bewegend bis herzzerreissend. Wer auch immer einst die besten Romane des 21. Jahrhunderts in eine Chartform bringen muss, sollte auf dieses Buch keinesfalls vergessen. Unbedingt lesenswert!

[lesetraum · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ein typischer Seethaler - das ist Kompliment und Kritik zugleich