Overview
An intimate portrait of genius, love, and betrayal at the end of Gustav Mahler's life. In the spring of 1910, Gustav Mahler--wrapped in a wool blanket--sits on the deck of the Amerika, sailing back to Europe. The ocean around him is gray and endless, the air sharp with wind and steel. Not yet fifty, Mahler is already a legend: in Vienna and New York, audiences fight for tickets to see the restless, small man who commands the most stubborn orchestra in the world. Yet his fame is shadowed by illness. His body is failing, his wife Alma has fallen in love with another man: the young architect Walter Gropius. Mahler has begged, humiliated himself, tried everything to keep her. Nothing worked, except the certainty of his approaching death. Alma has stayed, tending to him with care, perhaps to ease his final passage. On board, Mahler reflects on life, art, and above all, love. Finalist for the Deutscher Buchpreis and one of the most acclaimed German novels of recent years, Robert Seethaler's The Last Movement is a haunting, tender portrait of a great artist confronting his farewell to life.
Full Product Details
Author: Robert Seethaler ,
Charlotte Collins
Publisher: Europa Editions
Imprint: Europa Editions
Dimensions:
Width: 14.00cm
, Height: 3.60cm
, Length: 19.10cm
Weight: 0.181kg
ISBN: 9798889661801
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 28 April 2026
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Not yet available
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.
Reviews
""The triumph of literature over death. A surefire bestseller.""--Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ""A masterpiece about the last stages of a life.""--Annemarie Stoltenberg, NDR ""A beautifully composed work, melancholic and comforting.""--Britta Heidemann, WAZ ""Elegant, poetic and yet completely unsentimental. A treasure of a book.""--Barbara Weitzel, Welt am Sonntag ""A marvelous novel, right down to the last sentence.""--Die Tageszeitung ""Seethaler's language is something special.""--Der Spiegel
""A marvelous novel, right down to the last sentence.""--Die Tageszeitung ""Elegiac, poetic, yet free of sentimentality. A true gift.""--Welt am Sonntag ""Seethaler's language is something special.""--Der Spiegel
Author Information
Robert Seethaler was born in Vienna in 1966 and is the author of eight novels. In 2017 he was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize with A Whole Life (FSG, 2016). He also works as an actor, most recently in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth. He lives in Berlin. Charlotte Collins is a freelance journalist, author, and literary translator. Her translation of Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize.
