Effi Briest

In this witty masterpiece of poetic realism, expertly translated by Hugh Rorrison, Effi Briest shows Theodor Fontane at the height of his talents, as he questions the hypocrisies and destructive values of middle-class society. Effi Briest is only 17 when she is married off to Baron von Innstetten, travelling to live with him in a provincial town on the remote Baltic coast of Prussia. He is 20 years her senior, an ambitious bureaucrat uninterested in his young wife, and lively Effi becomes increasingly isolated, bored and anxious in her stifling surroundings. A half-hearted affair with Major Crampas - a manipulative married man with a reputation for womanising - temporarily distracts Effi from her loneliness. But years later, this brief liaison will return to Effi with devastating consequences. Written with great empathy for his characters, Fontane portrays a woman torn between her own desires and her roles as wife and mother, between her heart and the obligations of social circumstance.