A count's determination to build a castle by the sea ends in disaster for his family in this
elegantly ironic realist masterpiece from Germany's greatest 19th-century novelist Theodor
Fontane. "One of the finest literary autopsies of a foundering relationship." -- The New Yorker
As war between Prussia and Denmark brews over the territory of Schleswig-Holstein a German
nobleman is called to serve as a gentleman-in-waiting at the Danish court. Count Holk's life so
far has been happy and simple: he married for love and his pious wife and canny brother have
managed his estate so well that he's even been able to carry out his dream inspired by a
romantic ballad of building a castle by the sea. But the expense of his architectural folly
the mounting political tensions in the air and his rustic innocence all conspire to create a
tragedy. Seduced by the worldly ways of the Danish courtiers he begins an affair and drifts
ever farther away from his wife Christine. She meanwhile grows more and more serious as she
watches the course of wider events. When they meet again in the country will they be able to
find a way back to the love they once shared? A masterpiece of gentle irony and realist
psychological exploration this book by Germany's foremost 19th-century novelist is full of wit
compassion and poignant human failure. A delicate balance of the worldly and the provincial
the political and personal it is one of the greatest works of the great age of narrative
fiction.
