The Café with No Name

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Pub Date 13 Feb 2025 | Archive Date 13 Feb 2025

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Description

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

'How I loved this book . . . Seethaler is in his very own league' Elizabeth Strout


It is 1966, and Robert Simon has just fulfilled his dream by taking over a café on the corner of a bustling Vienna market. He recruits a barmaid, Mila, and soon the customers flock in. Factory workers, market traders, elderly ladies, a wrestler, a painter, an unemployed seamstress in search of a job, each bring their stories and their plans for the future. As Robert listens and Mila refills their glasses, romances bloom, friendships are made and fortunes change. And change is coming to the city around them, to the little café, and to Robert’s dream.

A story of the hopes, kindnesses and everyday heroism of one community, The Café with No Name has charmed millions of European readers. It is an unforgettable novel about how we carry each other through good and bad times, and how even the most ordinary life is, in its own way, quite extraordinary.

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

'How I loved this book . . . Seethaler is in his very own league' Elizabeth Strout


It is 1966, and Robert Simon has just fulfilled his dream by taking over a...


Advance Praise

‘How I loved this book! Filled with truth after truth, poignantly rendered and given to us with tender open-handedness. Seethaler is in his very own own league, capturing a place and time that is ultimately universal’ ELIZABETH STROUT    


Praise for Robert Seethaler:

A Whole Life is a lovely contemplation of a life in solitude in a remote valley, into which the modern world slowly intrudes’
IAN McEWAN     

    
‘Heart-rending and heartwarming. A Whole Life, for all its gentleness, is a very powerful book’ JIM CRACE         

‘Seethaler's scenes of mountain life are realised with spare, almost surreally vivid images. But what is perhaps most remarkable about this remarkable novel is the way that it continually weaves past, present and future into a single fabric’ Sunday Times

‘A slim masterpiece’ Daily Mail         

‘Seethaler renders a life at once ordinary and exquisite, exploring the vagaries of solitude with a gentle humility’ Times Literary Supplement

‘How I loved this book! Filled with truth after truth, poignantly rendered and given to us with tender open-handedness. Seethaler is in his very own own league, capturing a place and time that is...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781837260140
PRICE £16.99 (GBP)
PAGES 224

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Average rating from 34 members


Featured Reviews

Set in 1960s Vienna as the city recovers from WW2, this largely gentle story follows Simon as he renovates a run down café. His clientele wander in and out, some of whom we get to know well, others are minor players, but no less realistic.

There are dramatic moments, but mostly this is day-to-day real life that the reader can step into and absorb. The café and the market come to life through the writer's perceptive descriptions, never wordy, but detailed enough to make his scenes really come alive.

I liked Simon a lot and wished for more for him!

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I love these types of books: quiet and introspective and all about the human condition. This was great and I found it to be warming.

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The Café with No Name takes us to 1960s Vienna, where Robert Simon, a market worker runs a small cafe. The cafe becomes a becomes a community hub for the locals, each with their own stories and everyday struggles.

There’s no real plot—just simple, nostalgic moments that capture everyday life. It’s beautifully written -a real treat to read.

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The Cafe With No Name by Robert Seethaler

In 1960s Vienna Robert Simon revives a long-closed and dilapidated cafe. We are introduced to many character who come to the cafe, and to the surrounding area in a period of great change following the wars.

Wow, this book is absolutely brilliant - I loved it! The author and translator do such a great job of evoking the atmosphere of the period and the local community. I loved the characters and the stories of their lives. Very VERY highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

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