The Wall

The Wall - Marlen Haushofer

'Every joint and sinew of the story is restless with a sense of threat' London Review of Books 'The air trembled, gold and green and clear, at the edges of the forest' A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival. This is at once a simple account 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 simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world. 'Brilliant in its sustainment of dread, in its peeling away of old layers of reality to expose a raw way of seeing and feeling.' Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love **PERFECT FOR FANS OF THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, STATION ELEVEN AND THE MARTIAN** VINTAGE EARTH is a series of books that reveals our ever-changing relationship with the environment. These are stories old and young, set in worlds real or imagined, that allow us to explore our connection to the natural world. Transformative, wild, surprising and essential, these novels take on the most urgent story of our times.