The Fifth Year

About this book

A haunting story of a childhood in the Austrian countryside from the author of The Wall The Fifth Year follows a five-year-old girl, Marili, through each season of a single year on her grandparents’ farm in the mountains of Austria. Her grand-mother is a quiet, melancholic woman; her grandfather, with his calm, cheerful disposition, radiates warmth. Marili’s parents have presumably died in the war, and she is left to discover—with curiosity, wonder, and fear—the beauty and darkness of a quiet pastoral life. Sinister elements lurk beneath the surface of The Fifth Year, in Marili’s dreams and fantasies, and this deceptively simple tale of childhood, told in effervescent and evocative prose, bubbles to life in Marlen Haushofer’s inimitably alarming style.

Details

Format

Paperback

ISBN-13

9780811239981

Publisher

New Directions Publishing Corporation

Published

May 26, 2026

Pages

80

Weight

3.2 oz

Subject

Fiction