The Café with No Name
Late summer 1966 in Vienna, Austria: thirty-one-year-old Robert Simon wants more than odd jobs as a neighborhood repairman. Orphaned at a young age, he has learned how to fix just about anything. He lives by himself in a room rented from a war widow. A failed café in a poor but busy district sparks his imagination. Simon signs a rental agreement for the space, cleans it up, stocks it with drinks and modest food items. The café soon succeeds well enough to hire a Yugoslav immigrant, Mila. This literary novel presents slices of the lives of Simon, Mila, and the café’s guests over the next decade.
Steady customers range from the butcher shop owner across the street to a giant wrestler who falls in love with Mila. Local factory workers stop by at their shifts’ end. Most people in Vienna experienced the horrors of the Nazis, bomb raids, and war. Hence, a melancholy and sometimes morose outlook seeps into their observations and actions. It seems every day another body is fished out of the Danube. A difficult birth, as well as an exploding boiler, and collapsing bridge augment the somber mood.
Seethaler sets the stories in true-to-life details. Pigeons, rats, and insects play their proper roles. The odors and garbage from a huge nearby open market swirl over to the café. Snows, thunderstorms, rain, and heat affect everyone. Seethaler’s clean prose, even in translation, does not “sound” German. Its cadence fits the abbreviated stories, conversations, and internal thoughts. Recommended for readers seeking a literary exploration of post-war common people in Vienna as they rebuild their lives and homeland.
