The Fifth Year

By Marlen Haushofer
Translated by Shaun Whiteside

"Effortlessly poignant. Haushofer's prose is like clear lake water: clean, crisp, seemingly simple yet with surprising depths. This novella's translation from German to English was worth the 75-year wait."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Finally available to English-language readers thanks to Shaun Whiteside’s precise translation… Haushofer inserts sharp observations about religion, gender inequity, overwhelming grief, and looming dangers. Haushofer expertly, poignantly unearths life beneath the surface."—Terry Hong, Booklist

"A dreamy novella... In The Fifth Year, childhood bliss is edged with intimations of sorrow. Marili's is an honest sadness, slightly comic, but admirable in its intensity."— Becca Rothfeld, London Review of Books

A haunting story of a childhood in the Austrian countryside from the author of The Wall

The Fifth Year follows a five-year-old girl, Marili, through each season of a single year on her grandparents’ farm in the mountains of Austria. Her grand-mother is a quiet, melancholic woman; her grandfather, with his calm, cheerful disposition, radiates warmth. Marili’s parents have died in the war, and she is left to discover—with curiosity, wonder, and fear—the beauty and darkness of a quiet pastoral life. Sinister elements lurk beneath the surface of The Fifth Year, in Marili’s dreams and fantasies, and this deceptively simple tale of childhood, told in effervescent and evocative prose, bubbles to life in Marlen Haushofer’s inimitably alarming style.

Paperback
80 pages
New Directions, 2026
4.5x7.25 inches 
ISBN 9780811239981
Fiction, Novella