The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler: book review

The Tobacconist (2017) is set in Vienna, Austria in 1937-1938 and 1945.

Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel from the Salzkammergut mountains in Austria leaves his rural village to take an apprenticeship in Vienna with Otto Trsynek, a tobacconist, in 1937.

Selling cigarettes and newspapers, Franz meets the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who buys cigars in the store. Freud is 81 years old, and looks forward to conversations with the ‘fresh and vigorous’ Franz. Franz, too, looks forward to talking to Freud about romantic advice. They form a strong friendship.

But Freud was born to Jewish parents, and life changes irredeemably when Austria is annexed to Germany before the second World War and during the rise of anti-semitism.

Franz seeks advice from his mother, through postcards and letters, from Freud, through long conversations, and from Otto, through work advice. He also tries Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis by writing down his dreams.

Life is about love and loss, or as his mother says, ‘all of life is perpetual parting,’ especially as she is separated from her son.

Well-written, this novel explores the complex themes of respect and respectability, advice and wisdom, the cost of friendships and changing allegiances, in its historical setting.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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