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In the novella "Die Lebensentscheidung", Austrian writer Robert Menasse departs from his previous optimism and describes in a dark tone the disappointment of a European idealist...
Austrian writer Robert Menasse continues to develop what critics have called “EU prose.” In his 2017 novel “Die Hauptstadt,” which won the German Book Prize, he described the intrigues within the European Commission around a bold project: turning Auschwitz into a symbol of European unity. In his follow-up novel “Die Erweiterung” (2022), Menasse shifted attention from the center to the periphery, to Albania, where the national pride of the elites is an obstacle to the population’s aspiration for membership in the European Union.
These works always have a satirical dimension. Menasse makes it clear that today's European Union is not radical enough to realize the project of a united Europe. According to his vision, nationalism remains a remnant of the 19th century that has infiltrated the institutions, while the EU suffers from a lack of democracy. Instead, he imagines a multinational European republic, where diversity and a common identity coexist.
However, in the new novella “Die Lebensentscheidung” (“The Decision of Life”), the author departs from the optimism that characterized his previous works. According to a review in the German press, the text represents a darker turn in Menasse’s creativity: from a nostalgic person searching for a lost Europe, he now appears as an observer of its disintegration.
The main character is Franz Fiala, around 60 years old, an ordinary bureaucrat in the Directorate-General for the Environment of the European Commission. He has never been a rebel, but he decides to leave his job. The ideal that had driven him towards the European institutions has faded: projects remain on the shelves, farmers' protests block policies and skepticism towards the EU seems to be growing stronger.
Fiala lives between Brussels and Vienna, where he takes care of his mother, who is gradually losing her memory. The decision to quit her job initially seems like a practical matter: how to leave Brussels without losing his relationship with his girlfriend Nathalie. But everything changes when doctors diagnose pancreatic cancer. His ultimate goal becomes simple: to outlive his mother.
Critics also see stereotypes of the European experience in the novel's characters. Fiala's mother represents the aspiration for social advancement through culture: classical books, quotations from Schiller and Heine, visits to the opera, and the attempt to imitate bourgeois taste. This is the idea of a post-war Europe that believed in continuous progress, an ideal that today seems faded.
Franz Fiala is also a product of this social mobility through education. However, he always feels insecure in the face of people who come from a more consolidated bourgeois tradition. His personal relationships remain complicated and often blocked by the complexes he inherited from his family.
As the disease progresses, the novel follows the parallel decline of mother and son. The symbolism is clear: a generation that embodied the cultural ideal of “old Europe” and an idealist who believed in the European project are simultaneously disappearing. Fiala dies in the arms of his mother, who tries to free him from suffering.
The story deliberately recalls elements of Greek tragedy. Fiala's two worlds are Vienna and Brussels, while many scenes take place in Viennese cafés, the traditional space of cultural debate in Central Europe.
Critics note that Menasse skillfully uses the novella form to construct a profound psychological portrait of a man at the end of his life. His prose remains clear and rhythmic, without excessive embellishment, combining empathy with the disappointment of an idealist who sees the European project faltering.
Although the tone is bleak, the text can be read not only as a chronicle of decline, but also as a negative utopia: a warning that fragile institutions require determination to survive. According to German critics, this is a wish that Europe still deserves. /Adapted from FAZ /
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