Austrian novelist Robert Seethaler is known for his restrained and sensitive novels that illuminate the struggles and joys of peripheral lives. His debut, A Whole Life, centres on a man who barely leaves his mountain home. The Tobacconist is a coming-of-age novel set against the rise of fascism in Vienna. The Field introduces a chorus of the dead who tell the story of their village.
Like The Field, The Café With No Name uses a narrow lens to tell the story of a whole community. At the centre is 31-year-old Robert Simon, an itinerant worker who assists the stall holders of the Karmelitermarkt in Vienna. In the late summer of 1966, Simon notices that the cafe on the corner of the market has closed. He decides to take on the lease in order “to do something which would give his life a positive affirmation. To one day stand behind the bar of his own establishment.”
