The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler

The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler

From The Man Booker International Prize finalist Robert Seethaler comes a tender, heartbreaking story of one young man and his friendship with Sigmund Freud during the Nazi occupation of Vienna.

Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz.

As political and social conditions in Austria dramatically worsen with the Nazis' arrival in Vienna, Franz, Freud, and Anezka are swept into the maelstrom of events. Each has a big decision to make: to stay or to flee?

Robert Seethaler was born in Vienna in 1966 and is the author of several novels, including the international bestselling, Man Booker Prize-nominated A Whole Life. He also works as an actor, including a role in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth. He lives in Berlin.

Charlotte Collins studied English at Cambridge University. She worked as an actor and radio journalist in both
Germany and the U.K. before becoming a literary translator. She previously translated Robert Seethaler's novel The Tobacconist.