The Tobacconist (Der Trafikant)

Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel leaves his village & journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud, one of the regular customers. Over time, an unlikely friendship develops between the two very different men. When Franz falls desperately in love with the vaudeville dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz.

As the political & social conditions dramatically worsen with the annexation of Austria by Hitler’s Germany & the Nazis’ arrival in Vienna, Franz, Freud, & Anezka are swept into the maelstrom of events. And each has to make a big decision: to stay or to flee?

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Robert Seethaler was born in Vienna & divides his time between his home town & Berlin. He is the author of five novels, including the acclaimed A Whole Life, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.