Following the success of A Whole Life, and having been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize this year, Robert Seethaler’s The Tobacconist is an engaging piece of historical fiction set in Vienna as the spectre of Nazism approaches.

The story follows seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel as he leaves the rural innocence of lakeside Salzkammergut for the bustle and energy of Vienna. It is here that he works as an apprentice tobacconist for the enigmatic Otto Trsnyek, and most notably befriends an aging Sigmund Freud. It is an atmospheric work, incorporating aspects of the epistolary novel and is in many respects a classic bildungsroman, where the inclusion of Freud as the mentor to young Franz serves to anchor the story in an intellectual tradition.

It is clear that this works to varied success throughout the book, and at times the father of psychoanalysis is left mumbling words on the ‘mystery of the feminine’ as he enjoys his favourite cigar, without really developing either the central friendship of the story, or investigation of the internal uncertainty that such a figure would be facing. It is as if the characters are rendered powerless as society falls apart around them.

The Tobacconist certainly begins to take shape, however, by the latter half. The idyllic, excessive, and highly sentimental language of an Austria that Seethaler (through his protagonist, Franz) takes such pains to portray earlier on, ceases as the events of the time take over. The narrative is changes pace with the onset of the Anschluss in March 1938, and this in turn foreshadows the war to come. Franz is forced to act before it’s too late to save his Bohemian love, and to reconcile his friendship with Freud before his escape to England.

There are certainly moments of great poise throughout the novel. In one of the more striking scenes, a regular at the tobacconist’s takes up a final act of rebellion by displaying an anti-Nazi banner across a building and leaping to his death before those with ‘swastika armbands, cudgels, and faces twisted with murderous intent came crawling onto the roof’. It’s a futile yet wholly symbolic gesture. The Tobacconist is a tender story from a time of great calamity.

Robert Frantzeskos