The Wall

I can allow myself to write the truth; all the people for whom I have lied throughout my life are dead writes the heroine of Marlen Haushofer s The Wall, a quite ordinary, unnamed middle-aged woman who awakens to find she is the last living human being. Surmising her solitude is the result of a too successful military experiment, she begins the terrifying work of not only survival, but self-renewal. The Wall is at once a simple and moving talk of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one s name and a disturbing meditation on 20th century history.