[waegari]

Presently I'm reading a novel by the Austrian writer Marlen Haushofer (1920-1970), Die Mauer (the Wall). It was first published in 1968, and has recently been rediscovered as a classic of modern German literature.

It's about a woman who unexpectedly finds herself behind a transparant wall on some Austrian mountain, after some major catastrophe has taken place on the other side. Everything has petrified there; she and her immediate surroundings (including one dog, one cow and one cat) seem to be the only ones spared.

She has to learn how to cope with the small things left for her. I haven't finished readig it yet, but it's a very detailed story about the sort of situation people might find themselves in way after peak oil... with problems like: how to grow your own potatoes overnight, or what to do about serious tootthache without dentist at close range, and of course: what does it mean for one when your only source of heat and energy, your stock of matches has peaked...

Great great read, very rich in detail and suspense.

For those who can't read German, there is an English translation available.

Here's the Amazon.com review:

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')Originally published in German in 1962 and touted more recently as a feminist's Robinson Crusoe, this somber classic from prize-winner Haushofer chronicles the experiences of a (nameless) woman cut off from her familiar city ways in a remote hunting lodge, after Armageddon has snuffed out all life in the world beyond. With the woman's diary of activities during the first two years of isolation as foundation, the story assumes the shape and flavor of a journal. Saved from instant death by a transparent, apparently indestructible wall enclosing a substantial area of forest and alpine meadow, the woman finds relief from her isolation in companionship offered by a dog, a cat, kittens, and a cow and her calf, making them into a family that she cares for faithfully and frets over incessantly with each season's new challenges. Crops of potatoes, beans, and hay are harvested in sufficient quantity to keep all alive, with deer providing occasional meat for the table, but the satisfaction of having survived long winters and a halcyon summer is undone by a second sudden and equally devastating catastrophe, which triggers the need in her to tell her story. Although heavy with the repetition of daily chores, the account is also intensely introspective, probing as deeply into the psyche of the woman as it does into her world, which circumstances have placed in a new light. Subtly surreal, by turns claustrophobic and exhilarating, fixated with almost religious fervor on banal detail, this is a disturbing yet rewarding tale in which survival and femininity are strikingly merged. Not for macho readers.