Marlen Haushofer

Author

Marlen Haushofer was an Austrian novelist and short story writer whose work, largely overlooked during her lifetime, has been rediscovered as some of the most powerful and psychologically penetrating fiction of the twentieth century. Born in 1920 in Frauenstein, Upper Austria, Haushofer grew up in a rural, mountainous region that deeply... influenced her writing. She studied German literature in Vienna and Graz, and published several novels and short stories during the 1950s and 1960s, though she received only modest recognition before her death from bone cancer in 1970, aged just forty-nine. The Wall (Die Wand, 1963) is her masterpiece — a novel about a woman who goes to stay at a hunting lodge in the Austrian Alps and wakes to find an invisible, impenetrable wall has cut her off from the outside world. Everyone beyond the wall appears to be dead or frozen. Alone with a dog, a cat, and a cow, she must survive. The novel is at once a survival story, a meditation on solitude and freedom, and a profound exploration of what it means to be human when stripped of society. It was adapted into an Austrian film in 2012. Haushofer's prose is spare, precise, and extraordinarily controlled — her writing achieves an almost unbearable intimacy with its narrator's inner life. The Wall has been compared to the work of Kafka and Beckett for its existential power. The audiobook edition of The Wall is a compelling, immersive experience — the intimate first-person narration is perfectly suited to audio. Haushofer's books and audiobooks are essential for readers who love existential fiction, survival narratives, and novels that stay with you long after you finish them. Read more Show less