The Wall

Discover this addictive dystopia from the Vintage Earth series

Marlen Haushofer, Shaun Whiteside

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Paperback

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English

Vintage Classics
07 October 2025

This cult classic is the ultimate work of sustained dread - the story of a woman trapped alone in the forest.

A woman's weekend away in the Austrian mountains takes an inexplicable and sinister turn - and becomes a fight for survival.

A 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.

'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 Krauss, author of The History of Love

TRANSLATED BY SHAUN WHITESIDE

By: Marlen Haushofer
Translated by: Shaun Whiteside
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 182g
ISBN: 9781784879976
ISBN 10: 1784879975
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 07 October 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Marlen Haushofer (Author) Marie Helene Haushofer was born in Frauenstein, Austria in 1920. Following the Second World War, she worked in her husband's dentistry practice. She began publishing short stories in magazines from 1946. She enjoyed success with her novella The Fifth Year, which was published in 1952 but her most enduring work was The Wall, first published in 1963 and now considered a classic of dystopian fiction. She died in 1970. Shaun Whiteside (Translator) Shaun Whiteside is an award-winning translator from French, German, Italian and Dutch. His most recent translations from German include Aftermath by Harald J hner, To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann, Swansong 1945 by Walter Kempowski, Berlin Finale by Heinz Rein and The Broken House by Horst Kr ger.