A very gentle, slow moving story about a the life of a café owner and his clientele. Set in Vienna in the 60's it describes their lives over a number of years and how the community spirit helps them through difficult times. Not really for me.
Thank you to NetGalley and Canongate for the advance copy of this book.

The Café With No Name
By Robert Seethaler

An absolutely delightful story about a modest café in a busy marketplace in a working class section of 1960s Vienna, which was nudged back from dereliction by Robert Simon who simply wanted a place of his own.

Over the course of ten years we meet the various people who make up Robert's clientele, simple, hardworking people who each have their own hardships and their own perspectives. Through snippets and vignettes we come to understand this neighbourhood, share their experiences and observe the gentle kindnesses they grant each other as they go about the business of recovering their city from the rubble and ruin of the war.

This is a story that requires patience from the reader. While the language is warm and inviting, there's not a lot going on at first glance, but this is one of those books that seeps into your soul as the personalities develop. Each seemingly casual exchange adds another layer of complexity to this community of waywards and oddballs. It would have much appeal to readers who love stories of found family.

This is such a slim volume, and could easily be read on a single sitting, but my advice would be to linger over the chapters and allow some time between to absorb these humble, honest, salt of the earth characters.

Publication date:13th February 2025
Thanks to #NetGalley and #CanongateBooks for providing an eGalley for review purposes

A gentle read - beautifully written, compassionately observed and with a very fine sense of place. The Cafe with No Name is in a Vienna market. It’s nothing grand or pretentious, just somewhere where market workers and others can come for basic drinks and sustenance and for someone to talk to. All of life passes through the cafe and all are welcome. Although the book has no real plot it satisfies on a much more fundamental level with the writer’s superb observational skills and deep understanding of the human condition.

A historical novel of life in Vienna after WW II centred on a community of Store holders, their families and friends, of an open market. Infiltered is the homeless young man without family and fiends earning a living by doing odd jobs like cleaning clearing for the store holders as required. By good fortune he acquires the lease of an abandoned derelict Café nearby. By dint of hard work, cleaning and painting he brings the place back to work as watering hole for the community. A heart-warming story of the ups and downs of life where people survive due to the support of families, friends and neighbours.

Humanity in all its guises. A delightful trip through the lives of the community who pass through Robert’s café. Within the pages of this endearing story we find love and friendships blooming.
We see, in the face of adversity, there is always someone to hold a hand out to help. We discover how love can be found amongst the most unlikely couples - but there is also sadness here because there has to be a balance.
It’s a heartwarming read and very well worth reading.
I loved it. Come and sit with me in the Café with No Name and we’ll pass a pleasant hour watching the world go by and drinking raspberry soda with the locals.

In “The Cafe with No Name” by Robert Seethaler we are located in Vienna in the 60’s. We get to know Robert Simon who leases the property and sets up the neighbourhood cafe; with no big master plan other than to make a quiet living.
Slowly, with the help of his barmaid, Mila, he attracts local, loyal customers and with that we get a glimpse into peoples lives, the city and how it’s changing.
The novels strength is its atmosphere, this is about the lives of ordinary people, never too dramatic but leaving an impact, nevertheless.
A subdued, comforting and wistful read.
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My rating 3/5
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A newly translated to English edition was offered to me from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review.

A easy to read book. Pleasant story and overall pleasant read. A good choice for holiday or weekend read.

The Café with No Name centres on the eponymous café opened in Vienna's market area in summer 1966 by Robert Simon. During the next several years of the café's existence, we meet the staff and clientele, and learn about their lives, loves, happy times and sad. In the great scheme of things, nothing momentous happens - just daily life, in all its wonderful intricacies.
A well-written book (and, one assumes, well-translated by Katy Derbyshire) and an enjoyable read.

I enjoyed the gentleness of this book, which is about ordinary people living in 1960s Vienna. Whilst there are some big moments in terms of the experiences of some of the characters, it is not a book with much of a plot but more a insight into people's lives. A lovely book and has made we want to read more by Robert Seethaler.

This book was a total joy. A gorgeous examination of the lushness of every day life, and community, and small hopes and dreams. The extraordinary in the ordinary. Beautifully written, with irresistibly endearing, complex characters. A mini masterpiece I could read and re-read over and over again.

This book was not what I was expecting but the more I got into it the more I enjoyed it.
Robert Simon is an interesting character and most of the book is shown from his perspective as the proprietor of The Cafe with No name. As he relates particular happenings in the cafe and describes his regular customers you also start to find out more about Robert but by the end of the story he is still an enigma and you wonder where the rest of his life will take him. I admired the way he took care of his elderly landlady as she grew more forgetful and what came through so much in the book was the reciprocal care that she gave him. His waitress, Mila, clearly felt grateful to him when he gave her the job she desperately needed even though she had no previous experience. She, also had an interesting story to tell as she faced difficult times.
What I enjoyed most about this book was the snapshot it gave of life in Vienna in the 1960’s. The characters who visited the cafe and their individual stories made a lasting impression on me. Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.

I read an English translation of this book.
Set in post-war Vienna this is a lovely gentle book, giving insights into life of ordinary people after the war. It moves gradually through the years and lives of the customers.

I was happy I was able to read this novel as it's sweet, nostalgic, and the portrait of people and a city in a specific historical moments.
Great storytelling and style of writing. I want to read other story by this author
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Whilst set in 1966 Vienna this feels a very post-war novel, it could have been set in the 40s or 50s rather than the 60s. I felt that from a very narrow perspective, the small cast of characters told a universal story whilst also enhancing my understanding of the Austrian experience and period of change in Europe.

Whilst this is a character driven narrative, I found the characters drew a greater social historical backdrop by adding together the sum of their quotidien. Whilst knowing the history (as did the people we witness) I found it anomolous that the past, aside from its economic effects, was not featured more. But why would it? We are twenty years post-war, a newer generation mixing with veterans and the reality of looking forward rather than backwards is a societal norm. I liked the book for reminding me of that.

I enjoy a book about lives lived and this reminded me to a degree of Marzahn Mon Amour (Katja Oskamp) where we see slices of everyday living, albeit set against German reunification.

Liked but didn't love however I am sure this will distil for some time in my head,
With thanks to #NetGalley and #CanongateBooks for the opportunity to read and review

This novel has attracted mixed reviews since it was originally published in German, so I was intrigued to build my own opinion of it. Its title alludes to the famous Viennese coffee-house culture, but it soon becomes clear that the setting is not the coffee-house of the glittering literati and well-spoken politicians, but instead the coffee-house of the unprepossessing ordinary citizens trying to make a living in one of the poorer parts of the Austrian capital city. As the summer of 1966 gives over to autumn, casual worker Robert Simon is brave enough to take on this coffee house that offers those who frequent it a chance to relax, recharge and redesign their most intimate, individual dreams. Reading their quietly-drawn, nuanced, sensitively-written depictions, I occasionally felt reminded of Stefan Zweig’s Viennese masterpieces, and also of Thomas Bernhard’s semi-autobiographical renderings of ‘The Cellar. A Withdrawal’, in which a young Salzburger undergoes a similar apprenticeship to Seethaler’s character Robert Simon. Warmly recommended, this is a novel for those who want to immerse themselves in the ‘why’, rather than the ‘what’ of modern storytelling. Thank you to NetGalley and to the publishers for the free ARC, generously gifted, that allowed me to do just that.

A low key book which I feel was a little oversold by the rapturous reviews. It was one of those novels where I felt I was missing something as I found it a bit dull. The characters never quite came alive for me and the sketch like quality of the writing meant that I was only skimming the surface of the world. It was set in the 1960s and 70s but felt to me as if it was from a much earlier period; it never captured the era. Every now and then an incident or description of clothing would place it firmly in the intended time period which jarringly reminded me when it was supposed to be.. It was touching in parts and had a gentle atmosphere that will definitely appeal to some readers%

An unusual read which depicts the lives of a multi cultural Vienna. The focus is on Simon Robert who fulfilled his dream of opening a café in the city.

The author has selected a number of individuals who frequent the Café with no Name and elaborated on their experiences. Reading this novel was akin to peeling back the layers of a painting, bit by bit they were separate but somehow all united together by the Café. A rather depressing book with some snatches of humour. Overall, not one for me.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a real hidden gem. A short volume packed with life. It’s the story of Simon who takes over a run down café in Vienna in the mid 1960s. It’s situated on the corner of a market square and is the vehicle for an introspective look at the lives of some of the people who frequent the place. They all have a story and I was taken to a bustling but different world in a foreign city, one still recovering from the aftermath of the war. Sweethater is perceptive and although there’s no real plot, he presents a truly fascinating slice of life at that time. It’s a calming reflective tale and I absolutely loved it and woukd happily read more by this author.

Tender and melancholy : small lives in post war Vienna. Unfussy, spare writing.

The central character in this book, Robert Simon, works as a general handyman and stall holder’s assistant in a working class area, where there is a street market. He is a single man, liked by everyone, but somewhat of a quiet, introspective man, one of much kindness, but no ostentation. He lives in the house of an elderly, similar self-contained widow, renting a room from her.

Vienna is really settling in to a post-war reconstruction boom, beginning to change as working class housing and the damage sustained in the war, is moved in on by property developers.

Simon has an unexpected dream. He would like to create a community of his fellow working class men and women, the market stall community and also the workers rebuilding the area.

A derelict, rather unappealing, war damaged building which housed a previous café is available for lease. Robert does not intend anything gentrified, merely a place for coffee, beer, and other local drinks, and quite basic snacks, gherkins, bread and dripping. This is nothing fancy

The novel, which doesn’t really have a plot as such, is just the vignettes of the small lives of those who come to use the café, the locals who work in the area, and Robert Simon himself.

Some of these lives – well, most of them, to be honest – are ordinary, ‘little people’. These are not the individual movers and shakers of history, but they are in many ways, like far more of us, most of us, if our lives were viewed from the outside – individuals both noble and petty, those with dreams which might be considered small – very very far from what seems like today’s celebrity culture.

This is actually a beautifully written book, and the translation from the German, by Katy Derbyshire, felt seamless, in that I was not aware of reading something which seemed somehow a little awkward, which can happen if a translator does a kind of literal, word for word translation

I loved the quiet combination of something which felt very grounded, properly inhabiting material world, how things are made, done and used, in a mundane and everyday way, coupled with spare, unshowy simple seeming thoughts and feelings of Seethaler’s characters. Somehow, Seethaler makes the reader see the depths and the heroism of such small lives, each as important to themselves, within themselves, as the lives of those thought to be the colossuses of recorded history.

I have read all of Robert Seethaler's books and enjoyed each and every one.
Bookended by the setting up of the cafe by Robert Simon and its closure, the novel contains multiple portraits of characters that visit the cafe from the nearby market and neighbourhood. We don't really get huge insight into all these visitors as most only get a chapter, but it does build up a picture of the Austria in the sixties and the outlook of those struggling to make a living, with financial and relationship stresses.