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The Field

Robert Seethaler
Contents (34)
  1. Also by Robert Seethaler
  2. The Voices
  3. Hanna Heim
  4. Gerd Ingerland
  5. Sonja Mayers
  6. Father Hoberg
  7. Nabil al-­Bakri
  8. Herm Leydicke
  9. Lennie Martin
  10. Louise Trattner
  11. Gerda Baehr
  12. K. P. Lindow
  13. Stephanie Stanek
  14. Heiner Joseph Landmann
  15. Martha Avenieu
  16. Robert Avenieu
  17. Sophie Breyer
  18. Heribert Kraus
  19. Heide Friedland
  20. Franz Straubein
  21. Karl Jonas
  22. Susan Tessler
  23. Peter Lichtlein
  24. Annelie Lorbeer
  25. Hannes Dixon
  26. Martin Reynart
  27. Linda Aberius
  28. I
  29. II
  30. III
  31. Bernard Silbermann
  32. Kurt Kobielski
  33. Connie Busse
  34. Harry Stevens
Cover: The Field by Robert Seethaler. Author of A Whole Life, finalist for the International Booker Prize.
TITLE PAGE: The Field by Robert Seethaler. Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins. Published by House of Anansi Press International

Also by Robert Seethaler

The Tobacconist

A Whole Life

Copyright © 2018 Hanser Berlin in der Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München

English translation copyright © 2021 by Charlotte Collins

First published as Das Feld in 2018 by Hanser Berlin,
an imprint of Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich

First published in English in Canada in 2021 and the USA in 2021
by House of Anansi Press Inc.

www.houseofanansi.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

House of Anansi Press is a Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA by Benetech) publisher. The ebook version of this book meets stringent accessibility standards and is available to students and readers with print disabilities.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The field / Robert Seethaler ; translated by Charlotte Collins.

Other titles: Feld. English

Names: Seethaler, Robert, 1966- author. | Collins, Charlotte, 1967- translator.

Description: Translation of: Das Feld.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021023606X | Canadiana (ebook) 20210236116 |
ISBN 9781487010270 (softcover) | ISBN for the (EPUB)

Classification: LCC PT2721.E48 F4513 2021 | DDC 833/.92—dc23

Cover design: Neil Lang, Picador Art Department

Typesetting: Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

House of Anansi Press respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the Traditional Territory of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat, and the Haudenosaunee. It is also the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

Logos:Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Canadian Government

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

The Voices

The man looked out over the gravestones that lay before him as if strewn about the meadow. The grass was long and insects were buzzing in the air. On the crumbling cemetery wall, where elder bushes ran wild, a blackbird was singing. He couldn’t see it. His eyes had been giving him trouble for some time now, and although it got worse every year, he refused to wear glasses. There were good reasons why he should, but he didn’t want to hear them. If anyone said anything to him about it, he told them he’d got used to it and felt at ease in his increasingly blurred sur-­­roundings.

When the weather was good, he came every day. He would stroll around for a while among the graves before eventually sitting down on a wooden bench under a crooked birch tree. The bench didn’t belong to him, but he thought of it as his bench. It was old and rotten; no one else would trust a bench like that. But he greeted it as if it were a person, stroking his hand over the wood and saying, ‘Good morning,’ or ‘Cold night, wasn’t it?’