“The Tobacconist” by Robert Seethaler
A novel set in Vienna in 1937-38 and detailing the experiences of teenage Franz Huchel when he moves to the city from his childhood lakeside village after his widowed mother finds him a job as an apprentice at a newsagents and tobacco shop. Thereafter they communicate solely by postcards, these texts sprinkling the pages.
His departure from his idyllic birthplace is sudden and Franz finds himself in an urban setting learning his trade, and as instructed, reading the papers and keeping up to date with current events, which become more repressive as the Nazi influence increases within Austria.
His Jewish employer, Otto Trsnyek, disabled from the WW1, seems to spend his days keeping the books, but as external events within the city worsen he is threatened by a neighbouring shop keeper.
One of the shop’s customers is Sigmund Freud who Franz befriends and they meet from time to time for walks, Franz taking along a cigar for the Professor to enjoy. Freud provides advice to the young man. We also see inside the Freud household, his relationship with his daughter, and how the Nazi pressures eventually lead them to obtain official authorisation to travel to England.
The other character is Franz’s Bohemian girlfriend, Anezka, though this description of their relationship makes it sound more concrete than it is. However Franz is smitten after their first meeting at the ferris wheel in the city’s park. Their relationship is not straight forward, with Freud’s input Franz pursues her, naively believing there is a future, only eventually uncovering the reality.
The events move forward to May 1938 when the Freud family depart, by this time the arrival of the SS, and the Nazi influence within the city has changed all their lives.
This is not a long book but within it’s 234 pages we have a visual insight into life in Vienna before the war. The time period setting is well described and the reader walks the streets with Franz. Well translated this is an enjoyable and interesting read, if somewhat unsettling.
