This novel, pretentious and uninteresting, posits that a Viennese man wakes on the fourth of July, presumably a day of no particular significance in Austria, to find the city, indeed all of central Europe, uninhabited. This premise, perhaps fresh seventy-five years ago, has been worked to death in many a book and film, and this author does very little with it. Our protagonist sets up video cameras everywhere and watches and rewatches them endlessly. He steals the things he needs to survive. He drives around the empty streets. And that's about it. There are a few moments of interest--somebody who is a poor communicator telephones him occasionally and either the author or our hero pauses to reflect on the nature of society and what makes it function, but that's poor recompense for a book which will take most weeks to read. If some readers persevered long enough to find that something finally happened on page 313, so be it. ( )

Morgens aufzustehen und festzustellen, dass man mutterseelenallein auf der Welt ist - gibt es etwas Furchtbareres? Jonas macht diese Erfahrung und setzt als Erstes alles daran, in irgendeiner Form zu irgendjemandem Kontakt herzustellen. Doch egal, was er auch versucht, es bleibt erfolglos: Telefon, Internet, Funkgeräte - nichts und niemand regt sich. Zu Beginn voller Tatendrang, dieses Unerklärliche zu deuten, entwickelt er nach und nach Verfolgungsängste. Ist da nicht doch jemand oder etwas, was vielleicht auch verantwortlich für all das ist? Und nun auch versucht, sich seiner zu bemächtigen? Er beginnt, seine Umgebung und zuletzt auch sich selbst zu überwachen, jedoch ohne Ergebnis. Doch die Furcht wird immer stärker...
Es ist zwar beängstigend mitzuerleben, wie Jonas langsam aber sicher immer paranoidere Züge entwickelt, doch richtig überzeugend ist es nicht. Nur selten stellt er sich beispielsweise die Frage, wie er sein weiteres Überleben sichern will. Oder hat er daran kein Interesse? Statt dessen beschäftigt er sich weiter mit der Suche nach dem großen Unbekannten durch das Installieren von Überwachungskameras und stürzt sich zudem auf die Wiederherstellung der alten elterlichen Wohnung, die mittlerweile schon vor längerem von Fremden bezogen wurde. Zuflucht in einer vertrauten Vergangenheit?
Einerseits ist die ganze Szenerie sehr realistisch dargestellt, andererseits sind die Handlungen des Protagonisten nur schwer nachvollziehbar. So hört man immer oberflächlicher zu (obwohl Heikko Deutschmann das Ganze gut wiedergibt) und fragt sich immer wieder nur: Wieso? Und ist nicht ganz unglücklich, als das Hörbuch zu Ende geht. ( )

A fascinating and very sad novel about Jonas, who wakes up and finds that he is the only living person or animal in Vienna. There is no internet, no bird song, no one is answering a telephone anywhere. He searches and sets up cameras looking for signs of people.
I was gripped by this book; although in many ways it is slow moving and considered, it also had a fast movement to it too. Glavinic manages to do this with detailed observations and then fast speed. Unexplained things start to happen and I was hooked, wanting to know what these things were all about.
The novel is well written and although told with some distance, in the third person and with little writing about how he is feeling emotionally, Glavinic allows the reader to connect with this lonely man by telling us of his actions, rather than his thoughts. The seemingly irrationality of some of these actions, make you start to wonder how you would react, what would it be like. I don't think I will forget this novel in a hurry. ( )

good read, creepy in parts, but thought the ending let it down a bit but I guess it had to end somehow ( )

At first I didn't know if I could keep reading it. It felt kind of repetitive to me, but then again how can it not be with only one real character? After a while I definitely began to enjoy it. Parts of it actually made me nervous to the point where it was quite frightening. I was on edge the whole book waiting for things to happen.. Things you create in your own mind as well as those that Jonas created in his. it was definitely unnerving at times. If you don't mind not having all the answers at the end, this is recommended. It did bother me at first that I didn't know the why to everything, but as others have said the reasoning behind these things isn't really necessary to the feeling of the novel. ( )