This is a rich & enjoyable novel about marriage, love & betrayal, from the great German realist Theodor Fontane. Charming, cheerful Count Holk is delighted to be called away from his solemn wife to the distant court of a Danish princess. Swept up in the romance of his new, lively surroundings at a `castle by the sea`, the Count does not realize that not everyone there is what they seem
- & that a wrong decision may have fatal consequences. Published in 1892, this tragicomic work of failing marriage & modern sexual politics is full of the irony, elegance & masterful dialogue for which Theodor Fontane is acclaimed. Theodor Fontane was born in the Prussian province of Brandenburg in 1819. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he made his living as a writer. From 1855 to 1859, he lived in London & worked as a freelance journalist & press agent for the Prussian embassy. While working as a war correspondent during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1 he was taken prisoner, but released after two months. His first novel, Before the Storm, was published when he was fifty-eight & was followed by sixteen further novels, of which Effi Briest, No Way Back & On Tangled Paths are all published in Penguin Classics. He died in 1898. Hugh Rorrison & Helen Chambers have both published extensively on German literature, & translated together the Penguin Classics translation of Fontane`s Effi Briest. ” No Way Back has the amplitude, the social & personal varieties, we expect of the major social novel; it surely ranks among the most imaginatively challenging & intellectually satisfying attainments in that dominant nineteenth-century form”. (Paul Binding, The Spectator). ” Helen Chambers & Hugh Rorrison have enhanced on the previous English version.. .natural, idiomatic”. (Ritchie Robertson, Times Literary Supplement). ” Theodor Fontane`s standing in Germany is comparable to Jane Austen`s in the English-speaking world.. .his best work is an elegant & engaging blend of irony, penetration & compassion”. (Helen Chambers).