Seven books by writers from Austria, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with The Tobacconist and A Whole Life.
Austria has produced two Nobel laureates in literature, Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 and Peter Handke in 2019. Much Austrian writing is in German, and Vienna, where coffeehouses served as meeting places for writers, shaped a great deal of it. In the nineteenth century the dramatist Franz Grillparzer, author of Sappho, was regarded as Austria's national poet. The fall of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 and the shadow of Nazism run through much twentieth-century writing.
Stefan Zweig's memoir The World of Yesterday recalls Vienna's cultural golden age before 1914, while Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities is an ironic, sprawling portrait of the same fading monarchy. Jelinek's The Piano Teacher is a savage study of repression in postwar Vienna's musical life. Robert Seethaler's The Tobacconist, set in Vienna in 1937–38, shows a young apprentice as the Anschluss, Germany's annexation of Austria, approaches.
“Find a copy” goes to Bookshop.org. If you buy, we earn a small commission and independent bookshops get a share too.
Vienna in 1937–38 through a young tobacconist's apprentice, showing daily life and the creeping menace of the Anschluss.
A solitary man's life in a remote Alpine valley across the twentieth century, shaped by mountains, labour and modernisation.
Memoir of Habsburg Vienna's cultural golden age before 1914 and its collapse into war and Nazism.
A sprawling, ironic portrait of Vienna and the declining Habsburg monarchy on the eve of the First World War.
A savage study of repression and cultural pretension in postwar Vienna's musical and domestic life.
Memoir of his mother's life in rural Carinthia and Vienna, shaped by poverty, Nazism and the postwar years.
A woman's fracturing psyche in postwar Vienna, where the city's streets and lingering fascism haunt the narrative.
Albania Andorra Belarus Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czechia Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Kosovo Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Moldova Monaco Montenegro Netherlands North Macedonia Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia San Marino Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Ukraine United Kingdom Vatican City