About this ebook
The Field is the oldest part of the cemetery in Paulstadt, where some of the small town’s most outspoken residents can be found. From their graves, they tell stories. Some recall just a moment — perhaps the one in which they left this world, perhaps the one they now realize changed the course of their life forever. Some remember all the people they’ve been with, or the only person they ever loved. This chorus of voices — young, old, rich, poor — builds a picture of a community, seen from below ground. The streets of the sleepy provincial town are given shape and meaning by those who lived, loved, worked, mourned, and died there.
The Field is a constellation of human lives — each one different yet connected to countless others — that shows how existence, for all its fleetingness, still has profound meaning.
About the author
ROBERT SEETHALER was born in Austria and now divides his time between Vienna and Berlin. He is the author of four novels, including The Tobacconist, which has sold more than one million copies in Germany, and A Whole Life, a finalist for the International Booker Prize. He also works as a screenwriter and an actor, most recently in Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth.
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 received the Goethe-Institut’s Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life, which was also a finalist for the International Booker Prize and the International DUBLIN Literary Award. She co-translated the The Eighth Life, the acclaimed novel by Nino Haratischvili, and her other translations include Seethaler’s The Tobacconist and The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells.
