The reader is then introduced to roughly the first two decades of Andreas’ life through a flashback.

The next sentence states he never cheered or cried as a child. They are the first sign, that life in the mountain valley will change more and more rapidly.Īndreas joins the other cheering villagers. They will build the valley’s first cableway up into the mountains. Andreas witnesses the arrival of the first Bittermann & Söhne firm’s labourers in the village. The next episode takes place three months later. Their first meeting is something he will remember for the rest of his life. He enters the village pub and meets his future wife Marie for the first time. After Hörnerhannes runs off into mist and snow towards certain death, Andreas needs a drink. The event with Hörnerhannes takes about the first fourteen pages of the slim book. So like a real human being looking back and going over his or her life, this novel describes episodes which are somehow important in the main character’s life. Yet his life contains more tragedies than happiness.Īs Robert Seethaler stated during the interview: you can’t capture a human’s life in 160 pages nor in 160,000.

He doesn’t wish for, nor needs the moon to be contend with his lot.

Not that Andreas is dissatisfied with his lot. His body will be found much later, after a long, harsh, lonely life. Not much later, Andreas does spot the cold woman, but she has not yet come for him. Only towards the end of Andreas’ life and the book, does it become clear what has happened to Hörnerhannes. Andreas cries after him that it’s totally useless: nobody can run away from death. In fact, he’s so afraid to meet her, he runs off back into the mountains. This cold woman is part of the local folklore and is one of death’s many faces. On the way down, Hörnerhannes starts talking to Andreas about “die kalte Frau”. Andreas, the novel’s main character, is trying to bring a fellow mountaineer, “Hörnerhannes”, off the mountain to the village. The reader is introduced to Andreas Egger on a snowy February morning in 1933. The author had read these to the public during the event.

For whole pages sometimes get lost in translations. As Robert Seethaler had mentioned how important he found it to find and use the right words to craft his sentences and stories, this seemed extremely important. “Ein ganzes Leben” – “A whole life”- was available not in translation, but in the original German. About two days after the “Meet the author” during which Robert Seethaler had been interviewed, his bestseller had suddenly materialised in one of the libraries I frequent.

A whole life seethaler