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Hinterland
The year is 1944 and Veit Kolbe, a young German soldier, injured fighting in Russia, is recovering at Mondsee, a village and a lake below Drachenwand mountain, close to Salzburg in Austria. Here he meets Margot and Margarete, two young women who share his hope that sometime, sooner or later, life will begin again.
The war is lost but how long will it take before it finally comes to its end? In Hinterland, Arno Geiger tells of Veit’s nightmares and the strangely normal life of the small village, of the Brazilian who dreams of returning to Rio de Janeiro, of the landlady and her rallying calls, of Margarete the teacher with whom Veit falls in love, but who doesn't return his affection.
But when Veit’s wounds are healed his next call-up orders arrive. The military outlook for Germany and Austria looks increasingly grim and Veit’s luck has run out . . .
The war is lost but how long will it take before it finally comes to its end? In Hinterland, Arno Geiger tells of Veit’s nightmares and the strangely normal life of the small village, of the Brazilian who dreams of returning to Rio de Janeiro, of the landlady and her rallying calls, of Margarete the teacher with whom Veit falls in love, but who doesn't return his affection.
But when Veit’s wounds are healed his next call-up orders arrive. The military outlook for Germany and Austria looks increasingly grim and Veit’s luck has run out . . .
336 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 4, 2022
About the author
Arno Geiger
29 books131 followersGeiger grew up in the village of Wolfurt near Bregenz. He studied German studies, ancient history and comparative literature at the universities of Innsbruck and Vienna. He has worked as a freelance writer since 1993. From 1986 to 2002, he also worked as a technician at the annual Bregenzer Festspiele summer opera festival.
In 1996 and in 2004, he took part in the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis competition at Klagenfurt.
In October 2005, he was the recipient of the first Deutscher Buchpreis[1] literature prize (awarded by the booksellers' association of Germany) for his novel Es geht uns gut.
Geiger lives in Wolfurt and Vienna.
In 1996 and in 2004, he took part in the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis competition at Klagenfurt.
In October 2005, he was the recipient of the first Deutscher Buchpreis[1] literature prize (awarded by the booksellers' association of Germany) for his novel Es geht uns gut.
Geiger lives in Wolfurt and Vienna.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 31, 2026
Hinterland by Arno Geiger
This fresh, vital novel composed in Arno Geiger’s well-crafted prose is exquisite literary fiction from a writer at the top of his game.
It is spring 1944, and having been seriously wounded in battle, Veit Kolbe is sent home to recuperate. He goes to visit his uncle, the local police commander in the Austrian village of Mondsee. Jaded by five years of war and suffering from PTSD, Veit has no sympathy for Nazi ideology. He manages to avoid being sent back to the front for almost a year and falls in love with Margot, a married woman with a baby, who has travelled to Mondsee to escape the bombing in Darmstadt. The village lies in the shadow of the Drachenwand, a rock-climbing area that claims the life of a thirteen-year-old girl from one of the evacuee camps in the region.
Veit’s first-person journal account is interspersed with letters from Margot’s mother, from the dead girl’s sixteen-year-old boyfriend, and from a Jewish man who has narrowly escaped from Vienna to Budapest with his family. These secondary characters also appear in Veit’s journal as their paths cross to varying degrees. The cumulative effect of their stories creates a chorus of voices from the peripheries of war – stories of the relatives lost to bombing, the schoolboys forced to man anti-aircraft stations in the final months of fighting, the scarcity of food and the attempts at normality during turmoil and violence. Veit eventually returns to his regiment, promising Margot that he will do his best to stay alive and come back to her. A brief afterword continues the fiction that the novel is a collection of real documents, summarising the post-war fates of all the book’s characters. Some – notably Veit and Margot – find happiness and lead long lives; others don’t live to see peacetime.
The fascinating setting of Hinterland, showcasing the strange normality of village life amid war, as well as the unusual viewpoint of the central character, is captured in Geiger’s subtle, evocative prose. The book calls to mind All Quiet on the Western Front, eliciting sympathy for men whose young lives have been put on hold to fight a war they have no interest in. Geiger’s sympathetic depiction of his characters’ domestic, everyday existence as the world falls apart around them also recalls Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada. Hinterland is primed to capture the imaginations of a whole new readership.
This fresh, vital novel composed in Arno Geiger’s well-crafted prose is exquisite literary fiction from a writer at the top of his game.
It is spring 1944, and having been seriously wounded in battle, Veit Kolbe is sent home to recuperate. He goes to visit his uncle, the local police commander in the Austrian village of Mondsee. Jaded by five years of war and suffering from PTSD, Veit has no sympathy for Nazi ideology. He manages to avoid being sent back to the front for almost a year and falls in love with Margot, a married woman with a baby, who has travelled to Mondsee to escape the bombing in Darmstadt. The village lies in the shadow of the Drachenwand, a rock-climbing area that claims the life of a thirteen-year-old girl from one of the evacuee camps in the region.
Veit’s first-person journal account is interspersed with letters from Margot’s mother, from the dead girl’s sixteen-year-old boyfriend, and from a Jewish man who has narrowly escaped from Vienna to Budapest with his family. These secondary characters also appear in Veit’s journal as their paths cross to varying degrees. The cumulative effect of their stories creates a chorus of voices from the peripheries of war – stories of the relatives lost to bombing, the schoolboys forced to man anti-aircraft stations in the final months of fighting, the scarcity of food and the attempts at normality during turmoil and violence. Veit eventually returns to his regiment, promising Margot that he will do his best to stay alive and come back to her. A brief afterword continues the fiction that the novel is a collection of real documents, summarising the post-war fates of all the book’s characters. Some – notably Veit and Margot – find happiness and lead long lives; others don’t live to see peacetime.
The fascinating setting of Hinterland, showcasing the strange normality of village life amid war, as well as the unusual viewpoint of the central character, is captured in Geiger’s subtle, evocative prose. The book calls to mind All Quiet on the Western Front, eliciting sympathy for men whose young lives have been put on hold to fight a war they have no interest in. Geiger’s sympathetic depiction of his characters’ domestic, everyday existence as the world falls apart around them also recalls Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada. Hinterland is primed to capture the imaginations of a whole new readership.
January 11, 2025
Hinterland by Arno Geiger has a fantastic start before becoming uneven as the story progresses. I immediately took to Veit Kolbe, who was sent home from the front in 1944 after being wounded. The story's authenticity truly struck me, as it mirrored some of the stories my grandmother told me about what it was like surviving in Germany during World War II.
In Kolbe's case, he is suffering from PSTD after five years of combat and has no sympathy for the Nazi party. He doesn't want to return to the war and manages to remain in Mondsee for almost a year. During this time, he falls in love with a married woman named Margot.
Where Geiger loses me in interspersing letters written by secondary characters. While these three varied perspectives are interesting and allow Geiger to share other stories — families lost to bombings, food shortages, schoolboys on anti-aircraft guns, and the escape of one Jewish man with his family — none of them have a same powerful cadence of Kolbe's voice. And while I do appreciate what Geiger attempted to do here, given that the accounts in his book are taken from real documents, it may have been stronger for Geiger to retain his style throughout, allowing the story to unfold a little more evenly. Or, perhaps, he could have introduced these stories differently, fictionalized from Kolbe's point of view.
Still, I'm glad I stumbled into Geiger's work. Even if I cannot read it in original German, his style shines through with the translation. I will undoubtedly give his work another go to remain connected to one thread of my family's heritage. In Hinterland, there is no question he does a great job of capturing the lives of ordinary people during the war, which is precisely what I was looking for in this book. And I would recommend it if you are looking for the same. But as a literary read, I would have enjoyed reading Hinterland as a novella and allowing most of the other stories to stand on their own as a short, as opposed to interruptions that didn't always compel me to pick up the book again (while the other books I was reading did).
In Kolbe's case, he is suffering from PSTD after five years of combat and has no sympathy for the Nazi party. He doesn't want to return to the war and manages to remain in Mondsee for almost a year. During this time, he falls in love with a married woman named Margot.
Where Geiger loses me in interspersing letters written by secondary characters. While these three varied perspectives are interesting and allow Geiger to share other stories — families lost to bombings, food shortages, schoolboys on anti-aircraft guns, and the escape of one Jewish man with his family — none of them have a same powerful cadence of Kolbe's voice. And while I do appreciate what Geiger attempted to do here, given that the accounts in his book are taken from real documents, it may have been stronger for Geiger to retain his style throughout, allowing the story to unfold a little more evenly. Or, perhaps, he could have introduced these stories differently, fictionalized from Kolbe's point of view.
Still, I'm glad I stumbled into Geiger's work. Even if I cannot read it in original German, his style shines through with the translation. I will undoubtedly give his work another go to remain connected to one thread of my family's heritage. In Hinterland, there is no question he does a great job of capturing the lives of ordinary people during the war, which is precisely what I was looking for in this book. And I would recommend it if you are looking for the same. But as a literary read, I would have enjoyed reading Hinterland as a novella and allowing most of the other stories to stand on their own as a short, as opposed to interruptions that didn't always compel me to pick up the book again (while the other books I was reading did).
December 24, 2024
Wanted to read after visiting Salzkammergut last year. Beautiful writing, detail, representations of nature and the seasons. Loved the images of the mountains. I got a bit lost with the switching to letters but that's probably my problem. Such a brutal and unspeakable time to be alive, how anyone survived it is remarkable. Some lessons here on how fascist societies protect their demagogues, which is similar to how people defend Trump, Putin and other dangerous politicians. At times I found it tricky to sympathise with Veit, especially when he had not completely come to terms with the barbarity of the war. Why should we hear from German soldiers fighting for Hitler? Because we may find ourselves in the same position one day. War is total failure and we must do everything within peaceful means to stop it and end it.
March 26, 2024
I found this book very interesting to me because it was set in Europe during WWII and told from the point of view of a young German soldier recovering from wounds in a small town. That made it very different from other WWII books I had read
November 11, 2025
A great read that is almost like several diaries featuring both different people and different aspects of the last 18 months of the war in Germany 1944-1945. Fiction based on fact but none the less readable for that. For a refreshing alternate view it makes good reading.
August 21, 2024
A thoughtful look at the effect of Nazism on ordinary people, but with the possibility of redemption.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews