
A Whole Life
Robert Seethaler
A Whole Life was shortlisted for the Booker International Prize. Like John Williams' Stoner or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. An exquisite novel about a simple life, it has already demonstrated its power to move thousands of readers with a message of solace and truth. It looks at the moments, big and small, that make us what we are. Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, Andreas' heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in WWII – where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus – and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven.
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- ISBN-13
- 9781447283911
- Genre
- Topics
Awards
- International Dublin Literary AwardShortlistedMajor(2017)
- International Booker PrizeShortlistedMajor(2016)
Other awarded books from Robert Seethaler
Robert Seethaler has no other awarded or shortlisted books yet.
If you liked A Whole Life, you could also like these

The Rest of Our Lives
Ben Markovits
0 wins · 4 score

Half a Life
VS Naipaul
0 wins · 2 score

The Name of the World
Denis Johnson
0 wins · 4 score

More Than I Love My Life
David Grossman
0 wins · 2 score

The Unseen
Roy Jacobsen
0 wins · 8 score

The Silent Land
Graham Joyce
0 wins · 7 score

Visible Worlds
Marilyn Bowering
0 wins · 4 score

A New Life
Bernard Malamud
0 wins · 4 score

The Center of the World
Andreas Steinhöfel
0 wins · 2 score

Distant Light
Antonio Moresco
0 wins · 4 score

All That Man Is
David Szalay
0 wins · 4 score

Slow Man
J. M. Coetzee
0 wins · 6 score

A Tiler's Afternoon
Lars Gustafsson
0 wins · 4 score

The Wilderness
Samantha Harvey
0 wins · 6 score

Three Days and a Life
Pierre Lemaitre
0 wins · 2 score
Similar Topics

Fortune Smiles
Adam Johnson
1 win · 16 score
Love and loss
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Richard Flanagan
1 win · 16 score
Love and loss
Celestial Bodies
Jokha Alharthi
1 win · 12 score
Love and loss
Everything Inside
Edwidge Danticat
1 win · 12 score
Love and loss
Five Decembers
James Kestrel
1 win · 8 score
Love and loss
The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu
Tom Lin
1 win · 8 score
Love and loss
Any Human Heart
William Boyd
0 wins · 6 score
Love and loss
Shalimar the Clown
Salman Rushdie
0 wins · 6 score
Love and loss
The Death of Vishnu
Manil Suri
0 wins · 6 score
Love and loss
Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea
Sarah Pinsker
1 win · 5 score
Love and loss
The Love We Share Without Knowing
Christopher Barzak
0 wins · 5 score
Love and loss
You & You & You
Per Nilsson with Tara Chace (trans.)
1 win · 5 score
Love and loss
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You
Amy Bloom
0 wins · 4 score
Love and loss
Constance or Solitary Practices
Lawrence Durrell
0 wins · 4 score
Love and loss
Fire Rush
Jacqueline Crooks
0 wins · 4 score
Love and loss