‘One of those rare novels that can move you existentially, and change you.’ SWRThe field is the oldest part of Paulstadt’s cemetery, and where some of its most out-spoken residents can be found. Instead of resting silently in their graves, these late inhabitants tell stories from their lives. Some recall a single moment – perhaps their final one on earth, or the one they now see changed the course of their life for ever. Some remember all the people they’ve known, some, the only person they ever loved.These voices together – young, old, rich poor – build a picture of a community, as seen from below ground instead of from above. The streets of the small, sleepy provincial town of Paulstadt are given history, shape and meaning by those who lived, loved, worked, mourned and died there.From the author of the Man Booker International-shortlisted A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler’s The Field is about what happens at the end. It is a book of human lives – each one different, yet connected to countless others – that ultimately shows how life, for all its fleetingness, has meaning.‘The whole thing is so wonderfully crafted . . . that you literally don't want to stop reading, that you're sad to come to the end . . . What he has mastered like few other authors in German literary history is to give all his characters a profound dignity.’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung