“Opening in 1966, Robert Seethaler’s The Café With No Name conjures a fleeting vision of Vienna: risen from the wreckage of World War II, but not yet the affluent and global city of today. The novel revolves around a café, run by a man named Robert Simon, that serves the street vendors of the Karmelitermarkt neighbourhood in Vienna’s second district, sandwiched between the Danube canal and the river itself... Chronicling the everyday dramas of the café’s patrons over its decade-long existence, the novel is more an ode to a vanished world than a portrait of any single individual… Seethaler’s Vienna is evoked with a wistful and tender folksiness. His characters face heartbreak, loneliness, and the winds of change, but they can always return to the unnamed café.”
Read the full review in Asymptote Journal.
