The Loft

Marlen Haushofer

£9.99

A 1960s Austrian housewife is forced to review her past when pages from old diaries begin to arrive mysteriously in the letter box at her family home. Each day after the windows are cleaned and the baking is done, she forces herself to read and burn the evidence of her troubled youth.

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Publish Date: 02/07/2026

Description

An Austrian housewife sits in her loft intent on her drawings of birds and insects. Then one day a disturbing package arrives in the post…

The loft is her retreat, a place she can draw undisturbed, hidden away even from her own family. But the arrival of the parcel threatens her fragile equilibrium. It contains extracts from the narrator's diary, written twenty years before. They date back to a time when she was sent away by her husband to a remote cottage in a bid to 'cure' her from unexplained sudden deafness. More mysterious packages arrive. Who is sending them? And what did happened all those years ago in the forest?

'A thrilling novel… What gives this book its tremendous power? First the voice is charming, with a skittish beauty throughout… But there is also disarming honesty, and a lack of vanity, which appeals as only truth can’ John Self, Guardian

TRANSLATED BY AMANDA PRANTERA

Additional information

Weight 182 g
Dimensions 197 × 129 × 15 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

192

Language

English

Edition

Reprint

Dewey

833.914 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K