The Tobacconist

De: Robert Seethaler, Charlotte Collins, Charlotte Collins - translator

Narrado por: Rupert Simonian

From The Man Booker International Prize finalist Robert Seethaler comes a tender, heartbreaking story about one young man and his friendship with Sigmund Freud during the Nazi occupation of Vienna.

Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music hall 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 political and social conditions in Austria dramatically worsen with the Nazis’ arrival in Vienna, Franz, Freud and Anezka are swept into the maelstrom of events. Each has a big decision to make: to stay or to flee?

©2016 Robert Seethaler, Charlotte Collins (P)2018 Anansi Audio

Excellent historical drama set in Vienna before & during the Anschluss

Excellent historical drama set in Vienna before & during the Anschluss; a very good story and an interesting exploration of various people’s perspectives and responses to the drift toward, and the entrenchment of, fascism. All too relevant still today.

Simple horror

A deceptively simple tale of a young man’s progress from small Austrian town into Vienna, including all that 1938 entailed. Very compelling