Canongate to publish The Café With No Name by Robert Seethaler

Canongate has scooped The Café With No Name by Robert Seethaler, the author of The Tobacconist (Pan Macmillan) and A Whole Life (Pan Macmillan), which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.

Publisher at large Francis Bickmore acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to two novels by the Austrian author from Annemarie Blumenhagen of Ullstein, and Buchverlarg and Canongate will publish Katy Derbyshire’s translation in February 2025 alongside Michael Reynolds of Europa Editions in the USA and Canada.

"It is 1966, and Robert Simon has just fulfilled his dream by taking over a café on the corner of a bustling Vienna market," the synopsis says. "He recruits a barmaid, Mila, and soon the customers flock in. Factory workers, market traders, elderly ladies, a wrestler, a painter, an unemployed seamstress in search of a job, each bring their stories and their plans for the future. As Robert listens and Mila refills their glasses, romances bloom, friendships are made and fortunes change."

The synopsis adds: "A story of the hopes, kindnesses and everyday heroism of one community, The Café with No Name has charmed millions of European readers. It is an unforgettable novel about how we carry each other through good and bad times, and how even the most ordinary life is, in its own way, quite extraordinary."

Bickmore also acquired Seethaler’s previous novel, The Last Movement, from Friederike Barakat of the Hanser Agency for publication in summer 2026. "The Last Movement is a tender portrait of Gustav Mahler, the celebrated Romantic conductor, at the end of his life," the synopsis says.

Bickmore said: "The Café with no Name is Seethaler’s best novel yet, resonant with the warmth and wonderfully observant sensibility that he is known for. It speaks to the real-life triumphs and tragedies of 1960 Vienna, lives lived out of the spotlight, and it is no wonder it has been such a huge international bestseller. Robert Seethaler has been an in-house favourite author for many years and we leapt at the chance to bring him to our list with these two books."