A Whole Life

Book excerpt: “In this quiet, serenely powerful novel, a man lives out his life in a remote mountain village as the . . . 20th century sweeps past.” —Kirkus Reviews An International Bestseller Winner of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood—his home. Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life is a story of a man’s relationship with an ancient landscape, o the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.