A 200,000-copy German bestseller, A Whole Life follows one man's simple yet extraordinary life. A perfect, warm, moving antidote to, well, pretty much everything that's going on in the world . . . That this gentle-paced tale encompasses such a large timespan in the space of barely 160 pages is testament to Seethaler's pared-down writing style, beautifully rendered by the book's translator Charlotte Collins.