The Café with No Name

The novel version of an impressionist painting by a working-class existentialist philosopher, Robert Seethaler’s The Café with No Name paints scenes of Vienna from 1966 to 1976.

Characters are sketched out where they sit in the title’s unnamed café which the roaming protagonist, Robert Simon, buys and runs on a whim. Sample servings of dialogue are offered by patrons, overheard by the reader via Robert and Mila, his surprising first employee. As time passes, various characters light up the pages of this novel with their comings and goings: a war widow, a butcher, a Protestant vicar, a philandering painter, a professional wrestler, and others. They also darken the ink with personal tragedies, reflections on trauma, or simply growing older.

Although the plot provides lessons in impermanence, the characters create an impression of timelessness and place-less-ness. It’s a specific café in Vienna, Austria after World War II. But, it could be any nameless café down the street from wherever and whenever you are when you happen to read this novel. The Café with No Name is an extended European edition of Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”.