The Wall

What will happen to the world if most of us—everyone except one or two humans, in fact—disappear?

According to Marlen Haushofer, the world will continue on just fine. I find that idea to be a little shocking, sure, but also comforting: maybe humans aren’t essential to the world’s existence after all. Maybe the world doesn’t need humans for drama, love, heartbreak, or healing.

This is what I would call an anti-post-apocalyptic book, one in which no one is a hero because humanity is beyond saving. Instead, the narrator has deep relationships with several animals—a dog, some cats, and a cow—animals… show more.

I absolutely love twisted scenarios, and Maria Haushofer’s book presents us with a simple yet terrifying premise: What if you were trapped, alone, for the rest of your natural life?

While staying at her family’s countryside lodge, the protagonist wakes up to find an invisible barrier separating her small patch of land from the rest of the world. Thanks to some exploration and a pair of binoculars, she can see that everyone beyond the wall is dead, apparently turned to stone.

The entire story follows the sole character’s isolation and struggle to survive. Well, I should say sole human character… show more.

This novel, first published in 1963, looks at how we create meaning in our lives through the investment and care we give to that life. A woman vacationing in the Austrian mountains is suddenly cut off from the rest of humanity by a mysterious cataclysmic event, of which she may be the sole human survivor.

As a firsthand account, it examines her fear, loneliness, and ultimate commitment to creating a meaningful life in her new reality. It can be seen as a critique of modern life and how it has cut us off from the rhythms of nature. It is… show more.

This story has stayed with me for years. A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains and wakes up to an inexplicable new reality—she’s totally alone in the world, so it seems, and has to learn to fend for herself. We journey into the unknown with her as she reports on the mental and physical challenges of her new daily life… and it stirs up so many interesting questions about who we are without connection and community, and where meaning can be found in the most stripped-back life.

Ok, so the protagonist of this book isn’t really a “girl” – she’s a grown woman – but I still think this is a great book for anyone in their mid-teens and up. I’m fairly sure it was another second-hand bookshop find, because how else would I have come across a 1963 post-apocalyptic novel by an Austrian author that didn’t have an English translation until 1990? An unnamed woman finds herself stuck behind an invisible wall in the Austrian mountains after a possible nuclear event; a dog, a cow, and a cat are the only other apparent survivors. It’s eerie… show more.

Read during a jag of dystopian fiction, this one stuck with me. First published in Austria in 1963, it only got translated into English in 1990, which suits the story’s timelessness. For some reason, the world ends and traps a woman behind a glass wall. Not important why the world as she knows it is gone. It just is, and she has to keep living, and part of that means writing about it. Success will not know recognition, her words will not be read. Stripped of all need to answer to any other human or societal expectation, the story stretches… show more.