The Wall
Published on 5. June 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-1-78487-997-6 (ISBN)
Description
A woman's weekend away in the Austrian mountains takes an inexplicable and sinister turn - and becomes a fight for survival.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT
A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival.
This is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name, and simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world.
'One of the most beautiful and most harrowing books I've ever read, as well as one of the best' Susan Choi
'Every joint and sinew of the story is restless with a sense of threat' London Review of Books
'Brilliant in its sustainment of dread, in its peeling away of old layers of reality to expose a raw way of seeing and feeling.' Nicole Krauss
TRANSLATED BY SHAUN WHITESIDE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT
A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival.
This is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name, and simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world.
'One of the most beautiful and most harrowing books I've ever read, as well as one of the best' Susan Choi
'Every joint and sinew of the story is restless with a sense of threat' London Review of Books
'Brilliant in its sustainment of dread, in its peeling away of old layers of reality to expose a raw way of seeing and feeling.' Nicole Krauss
TRANSLATED BY SHAUN WHITESIDE
Reviews / Votes
One of the most beautiful and most harrowing books I've ever read, as well as one of the best -- Susan Choi A brutal and absorbing dystopian novel... Haushofer's book is one of the most profoundly feminist works of the past century * The Atlantic * The Wall is an existentialist masterpiece that can offer profound consolation as well as the ultimate lesson in loss -- Michel Faber Totally gripping -- Daniel Swift * Spectator, *Books of the Year* * Brilliant in its sustainment of dread, in its peeling away of old layers of reality to expose a raw way of seeing and feeling. Doris Lessing once remarked that only a woman could have written this novel, and it's true... I've read The Wall three times already and am nowhere near finished -- Nicole Krauss It's a novel that contrives to be, by turns, utopian and dystopian, an idyll and a nightmare... Every joint and sinew of the story is restless with a sense of threat * London Review of Books * The Wall is a dystopian novel that gradually becomes a utopian one, as our narrator makes a new community... a feminist rewriting of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe * New Yorker * It makes you sick, because, if she wasn't a woman, everyone would be reading it, like Robinson Crusoe -- Sheila Heti, author of 'Motherhood' and 'Pure Colour' An extraordinarily interesting writer, always underappreciated -- Elfriede Jelinek The Wall is a wonderful novel. It is not often that you can say only a woman could have written this book, but women in particular will understand the heroine's loving devotion to the details of making and keeping life, every day felt as a victory against everything that would like to undermine and destroy -- Doris LessingMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
187 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78487-997-6 (9781784879976)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Persons
Marlen Haushofer (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.
Shaun Whiteside (Translator)
Shaun Whiteside is an award-winning translator from French, German, Italian and Dutch. His most recent translations from German include Aftermath by Harald Jaehner, To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann, Swansong 1945 by Walter Kempowski, Berlin Finale by Heinz Rein and The Broken House by Horst Krueger.
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.
Shaun Whiteside (Translator)
Shaun Whiteside is an award-winning translator from French, German, Italian and Dutch. His most recent translations from German include Aftermath by Harald Jaehner, To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann, Swansong 1945 by Walter Kempowski, Berlin Finale by Heinz Rein and The Broken House by Horst Krueger.