Robert Seethaler is an amazing writer, and I’ve read a few of his works in translation. He’s one of those Austrian authors I actually first stumbled upon in Vienna, when I bought his book The Tobacconist years ago. So, off the back of my recent trip to Vienna, it felt great to be reading another one of his books.
Café with No Name is a short yet surprisingly rich and complex, sweetly melancholic, novel that traces the life of a man’s humble café opening in the 1960s.
We follow its young owner through his initial foray into running a business, and while the narrator and his story are compelling, I think I was most delighted by all the different characters who drift into the café. Even the ones who are never fully introduced leave an impression; often, you simply overhear fragments of their dialogue and conversations. I really loved that, because you could feel the shifting city and changing society, with a beautiful mixture of the everyday and the profound.
There’s a strong sense of hardship and everyday tragedy running through the novel too: alcoholism, poverty, difficult relationships, and people struggling to get by. But it’s also a book that celebrates community and small pleasures.
There’s something about the café itself, with its simple fare of bread and dripping, gherkins, local wines, and coffee, that makes you feel as though you’re really there, among the factory girls after a long shift or sitting beside the local strongman.
So yes, a really great book: one that feels universal while still retaining that distinctly Viennese quality and charm.
Read if you want to taste the bittersweetness of life in a Viennese café.
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