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by Robert Seethaler
A vibrant tale of love, companionship, and renewal set against the transformations of 1960s Vienna.
Summer 1966. Robert Simon is in his early thirties and has a dream. Raised in a home for war orphans, Robert has nonetheless grown into a warm-hearted, hard-working, and determined man. When the former owners of the corner café in the Carmelite market square shutter the business, Robert sees that the chance to realize his dream has arrived.
The place, dark and dilapidated, is in a poor neighborhood of the Austrian capital, but for some time now a new wind has been blowing, and the air is filled with an inexplicable energy and a desire for renewal. In the newspapers with which fishmongers wrap the char and trout from the Danube, one can read about great things to come, a bright future beginning to rise from the quagmire of the past. Enlivened by these promises, Robert refurbishes the café and, rewarding him for his efforts and search of a congenial place to gather, talk, read, or just sit and be, customers arrive, bringing their stories of passions, friendships, abandonments, and bereavements. Some are in search of company, others long for love, or just a place where they can feel understood. As the city is transformed, Robert's café becomes at once a place of refuge and one from which to observe, mourn, and rejoice.
Combining the enchantment of warm prose with tender humor, Robert Seethaler has written a charming parable of human existence animated by unforgettable characters and a kaleidoscope of human stories.
"A gem of a novel, whimsical and bittersweet but never sentimental, with indelible characters and a powerful sense of place." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Beautiful... Seethaler's story bursts with empathy in its portrayal of a found family. This is a winner." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Set in the 1960s and 1970s in a city where World War II still reverberates, Robert Seethaler's tender novel meditates on the passage of time and bonds that last." —Foreword Reviews
"How I loved this book! Filled with truth after truth, poignantly rendered and given to us with tender open-handedness. Seethaler is in his very own league, capturing a place and time that is ultimately universal." —Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy by the Sea
"Robert Seethaler has always created the epic from the ordinary…In The Café with No Name, he makes poetry out of the broken lives of the lost and disregarded who inhabit the margins of the great city and shows us how gold can be found in dust." —Anuradha Roy, author of All the Lives We Never Lived
This information about The Café with No Name was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Robert Seethaler was born in Vienna in 1966 and is the author of eight novels. In 2017 he was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize with A Whole Life (FSG, 2016). He also works as an actor, most recently in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth. He lives in Berlin.
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