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Weekend is featuring all six books shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, which gives equal recognition to the writer and the translator. A Whole Life by Austrian writer Robert Seethaler, translated into English by Charlotte Collins tells the story of Andreas Egger, a farmhand and later mountain guide in the Alps. He is a poor man, who only leaves the valley he lives in once to go to war. An uneventful life perhaps -- but this relatively short novel touches on themes of life, death, love, loneliness and the relationship between human beings and nature. It's the first novel Charlotte Collins has translated and she told Weekend's Anu Anand how she got the job.