Effi Briest

Description:

Unworldly young Effi Briest is married off to Baron von Innstetten, an austere and ambitious civil servant twice her age, who has little time for his new wife. Isolated and bored, Effi finds comfort and distraction in a brief liaison with Major Crampas, a married man with a dangerous reputation. But years later, when Effi has almost forgotten her affair, the secret returns to haunt her - with fatal consequences. In taut, ironic prose Fontane depicts a world where sexuality and the will to enjoy life are stifled by vain pretences of civilization, and the obligations of circumstance. Considered to be his greatest novel, this is a humane, unsentimental portrait of a young woman torn between her duties as a wife and mother and the instincts of her heart.

subjects: Fiction,  Social life and customs,  Prussian National characteristics,  Prussian national characteristics in fiction,  Teenage girls,  German fiction,  Adultery,  Teenage girls in fiction,  Adultery in fiction,  German language books,  Classic Literature,  Non-English Fiction,  Poetry,  Continental european fiction (fictional works by one author),  Germany, fiction,  Berlin (germany), fiction,  Fiction, general,  Adultery--germany--prussia--fiction,  National characteristics, prussian,  National characteristics, prussian--fiction,  Teenage girls--germany--prussia--fiction,  833.8,  Adel,  Ehebruch,  Belletristische Darstellung,  Effi Briest (Fontane)

People: Theodor Fontane (1819-1898)

Places: Berlin (Germany),  Prussia,  Germany

Times: 19th century