Finally: Robert Seethaler in Finnish!

We are super thrilled that Robert Seethaler’s A WHOLE LIFE is available in Finnish translation. This 120-page gem of a novel has seen an incredible success worldwide and was translated into 37 languages. 38 languages including Aula’s beautiful Finnish edition!

This August (!), Hanser Berlin will be publishing Robert’s new novel: THE LAST MOVEMENT. On 128-pages, Robert Seethaler draws the poignant portrait of a composer who has grown tired while he is confronted with memories of the past in crystal-clear moments of beauty and regret.

Music doesn’t need anything or anyone, it’s always there. But what about life? THE LAST MOVEMENT is the moving portrait of the outstanding composer Gustav Mahler at the end of his life.

Gustav Mahler sits on the deck of a ship en route from New York to Europe. He is famous – the greatest musician in the world in fact – but he is in pain, as he always has been. While the ship’s boy cares for him gently but insistently, Mahler thinks over the past few years, the summers in the mountains and the death of his daughter Maria, whom he still thinks he sees sometimes. And of Anna, his other daughter who is sitting downstairs at breakfast; and of Alma, the love of his life who has driven him to madness and to whom he has long since lost contact. This is to be his last ever trip.

Foreign press on Robert Seethaler’s A WHOLE LIFE:

»Heart-rending and heart-warming . . . for all its gentleness, a very powerful novel« Jim Crace

»Readers will discover in [Seethaler’s] contained prose a vehicle for keen insight and observation« Publishers Weekly

»The book’s prose has a directness and detail that helps set off the moments of genuine wisdom and restrained poetry . . . It is at this point that you realize why the novel should be doing so well in Germany, and why it is so urgent for the rest of us: it can guide its readers to make the best of their lives, however they turn out« Sunday Telegraph

»Against the backdrop of a literary world that often seems crowded with novels yelling ‚Look at me!, ‚ it’s refreshing to read a story marked by quiet, concentrated attention . . . Deeply moving« Sunday Times

»Seethaler shows that for even the most ordinary people, life is an extraordinary adventure and he does so tenderly and memorably« Mail on Sunday

»A tender and moving look at the human capacity for adaptation, Seethaler’s understated tale is a reminder that joy can be found in daily toils and simple pleasures« Jonathan Fullmer, Booklist

»Mr. Seethaler has produced a compact work of grace and beauty« Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

»A Whole Life is a provocatively ambitious title for this spare, novella-length work . . . Flecked with profundity [and] dark humor« John Williams, The New York Times