The Wall

I can allow myself to write the truth; all the people for whom I have lied throughout my life are dead writes the heroine of Marlen HaushofersThe Wall, a quite ordinary, unnamed middle-aged woman who awakens to find she is the last living human being. Surmising her solitude is the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of not only survival but also self-renewal. The Wallis at once a simple and moving journalwith talk of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of ones nameand a disturbing meditation on twentieth-century history.