Wall

A woman's weekend away in the Austrian mountains takes an inexplicable and sinister turn - and becomes a fight for survival.WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETTA 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.'One of the most beautiful and most harrowing books I ve ever read, as well as one of the best' Susan Choi'Every joint and sinew of the story is restless with a sense of threat' London Review of Books'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 KraussTRANSLATED BY SHAUN WHITESIDE