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Loading... Die Wand (original 1963; edition 2012)by Marlen Haushofer
Work InformationThe Wall by Marlen Haushofer (1963)
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» 10 more No current Talk conversations about this book. The Wall is the best-known work by the Austrian writer, Marlen Haushofer (1920-1970). The plot is simple, a woman vacationing in an Alpine hunting lodge finds herself alone when her housemates do not return from a party across the valley. When she walks out to find them, she finds herself confined to the valley by an invisible wall. The only person she can see on the other side of the wall is dead. There is no radio reception. Birds are killed when they fly into the wall. Her diary recounts her life alone with only a bloodhound, a cat, and a cow. She learns to be independent and at peace in nature. The novel is a sphynx-like symbol that lets critics do what they will with it. The London Review of books treats it as a survival tale. The LA Times describes it as a reverie. The New Yorker says it is a commentary on utopian and dystopian themes. The Atlantic proclaims it as a “feminist vision of escape” and the Chicago Review of Books finds in it a paradigm of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “container novel,” a form that avoids the violence of a traditional plot. Who am I to chime in? 4 stars. ( ![]() A woman staying in a hunting lodge at the foot of an Austrian mountain wakes up to find that an invisible wall has gone up around her mountain and that every living creature on the other side of the wall is dead. Although this may sound like the beginning of a science fiction work, the wall is only a literary device to allow the author to put her heroine in an existential situation of total solitude. The book follows here for 2+ years as she adapts to her situation with her only company being a dog, a cat and a cow. The book is about so many things: nature, solitude, womanhood, the relationships between animals and mankind, and so much more. The descriptions of nature are wonderful while the story unfolds at a slow pace. The story stayed with me long after I finished reading and I found it all unsettling. easily one of the best movies i've watched in the past year... the plot revolves around an impenetrable barrier surrounding an austrian hunting lodge, but once you get past this, the story becomes more a study on how to survive, relationships, all done with just spare narration... honestly, it's a difficult movie to talk about, but i found it truly enjoyable. the cinematography was stunning as well... Beautifully written. Not much happens in this book but the themes, nuance and perceptiveness of the character and the writing touched me deeply. A meditation on loneliness and what it takes to make one feel happy and satisfied. Surprisingly very little.
The Wall is a quiet book about domesticity, planting, beauty, the rhythms of keeping house, the land, human nature—and what a person can love in a people-less world. I consider it The Road’s antithesis. In contrast to McCarthy’s characters, who are toiling desperately for their survival in an ugly world, The Wall suggests our disappearance from the planet need not seem a tragedy.
"I can allow myself to write the truth; all the people for whom I have lied throughout my life are dead" writes the heroine of Marlen Haushofer's The Wall, a quite ordinary, unnamed middle-aged woman who awakens to find she is the last living human being. Surmising her solitude is the result of a too successful military experiment, she begins the terrifying work of not only survival, but self-renewal. The Wall is at once a simple and moving talk " of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name - and a disturbing meditation on 20th century history. No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumMarlen Haushofer's book The Wall was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Popular covers
![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)833.914 — Literature German and Germanic German fiction Modern period (1900-) 1900-1990 1945-1990LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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