The Wall
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A haunting feminist sci-fi masterpiece and international bestseller that is “as absorbing as Robinson Crusoe” (Doris Lessing)
While vacationing in a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains, a middle-aged woman awakens one morning to find herself separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall. With a cat, a dog, and a cow as her sole companions, she learns how to survive and cope with her loneliness.Allegorical yet deeply personal and absorbing, The Wall is at once a critique of modern civilization, a nuanced and loving portrait of a relationship between a woman and her animals, a thrilling survival story, a Cold War-era dystopian adventure, and a truly singular feminist classic.
Marlen Haushofer
Marlen Haushofer (1920–1970) was an Austrian author of short stories, novels, radio plays, and children’s books. Her work has had a strong influence on many German-language writers, such as the Nobel Prize–winner Elfriede Jelinek, who dedicated one of her plays to her. The relaunch of her classic The Wall—acclaimed "strange and wondrous" by James Wood in The New Yorker—was a major literary sensation.
Shaun Whiteside
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Shaun Whiteside has translated over fifty books from German, French, Italian and Dutch, including novels by Amélie Nothomb, Luther Blissett, Wu Ming and Marcel Möring. His translations of Freud, Musil, Schnitzler and Nietzsche are published by Penguin Classics. His translation of the novel Magdalena the Sinner by Lilian Faschinger won the 1996 Schlegel-Tick Prize. His most recent translation from German is Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler. He lives in London.
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