Frustrated by the bureaucratic maze, Franz Fiala makes a life-changing decision and quits his job at the European Commission. When he visits his mother in Vienna for her 89th birthday, he conceals his early retirement from her. His conversation with Nathalie, with whom he has been in a relationship in Brussels for four years, about their future together also fails. Then, recurring pains appear that can no longer be ignored. The diagnosis: cancer; it's unrealistic that he has another year to live. And suddenly, his sole focus is on deceiving his mother, sparing her the pain of watching her son die. 'For him, survival could only mean outliving his mother. To conceal his illness from her until her death. It was now a race for survival. This was the life-or-death decision.' Can one decide about one's life? Not about the end, but through willpower about continuing to live, longer than would be expected? With existential force, yet with a light touch, Robert Menasse tells the story of a race against death in *The Life Decision*. Life and death, love and family—these are the themes of this sophisticated and artful novella. biography Robert Menasse was born in Vienna on June 21, 1954. He studied German literature, philosophy, and political science in Vienna, Salzburg, and Messina, receiving his doctorate in 1980. From 1981 to 1988, he worked as an assistant at the Institute for Literary Theory at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Since then, the writer and essayist has worked as a freelance journalist. In 1990, Robert Menasse was the first recipient of the Heimito von Doderer Prize. The writer, who also works as a translator from Brazilian Portuguese, lives in Vienna and Amsterdam. In 2002, he was awarded the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, the Marie Luise Kaschnitz Prize, and the Lion Feuchtwanger Prize, and in 2003, the Erich Fried Prize. In 2017, he received the German Book Prize. New product