On tangled paths

In 1870s Berlin, an aristocratic officer in a glamorous cavalry regiment and a seamstress supporting herself and her invalid foster-mother with piecework, defy convention by falling in love. What might have been a simple tale of conflict between love and duty becomes, in Fontane's hands, something more sophisticated. The contrast between the lovers' whole-hearted view of each other and the world's trivializing view of their relationship underlies a tautly sprung narrative which is tenderly moving without being sentimental; gently ironic and full of social comedy. Fontane's brilliant use of dialogue creates a vigorous and loving portrait of the new German capital and its inhabitants. ""The immense pleasures of the novel lie in the author's cool-headed approach to what, in other hands, could have been a forgettable melodrama. . . . The book is filled with comparable moments of small facts transfigured into something magical.""-The New Yorker March 7, 2011 As much a psychological as a social realist, the author is interested in the emotional conflicts that arise between individual desire and social conditioning, class expectations and personality.

Year

2013

Language

English

Series

Penguin classics

Publisher

Penguin Books

Editions

1

Pages

192

ISBN

9780141392172

Data source: Wikidata