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Effi Briest
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Effi Briest Paperback - 2001

by Theodor Fontane; Hugh Rorrison (Translator); Helen Chambers (Translator)


Summary

In 1919 Thomas Mann hailed Effi Briest (1895) as one of "the six most significant novels ever written." Set in Bismarck's Germany, Fontane's luminous tale of a socially suitable but emotionally disastrous match between the enchanting seventeen-year-old Effi and an austere, workaholic civil servant twice her age, is at once touching and unsettling. Fontane's taut, ironic narrative depicts a world where sexuality and the enjoyment of life are stifled by narrow-mindedness and circumstance. Considered by many to be the pinnacle of the nineteenth-century German novel, Effi Briest is a tale of adultery that ranks with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina and brilliantly demonstrates the truth of the author's comment and "women's stories are generally far more interesting."

From the publisher

Theodor Fontane was born in Neuruppin in 1819, the son of a Gascon Huguenot father and a Cevennoise mother, and was brought up on the Baltic Sea coast of Prussia. He did not write his first novel until the age of fifty-six and consequently was able to bring to his fiction a lifetime's experience from many spheres. He was a pharmaceutical dispenser, a war correspondent in the Austrian Campaign of 1866 and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and secretary to the Prussian Royal Academy of Arts. Fontane was the author of two war books, four volumes of travels in Mark Brandenburg, a slim volume of ballads and another of impressions. Vor dem Sturm (1878) is held to be a masterpiece in the genre of the historical novel. A theme of 'the woman's predicament' runs through his novels L'Adultera (1882), Cecile (1886), Wirrungen (1888), Frau Jenny Treibel (1893) and Effi Briest (1895). Poggenpuhls was published in 1896. He died in 1898.

First line

To the front of Hohen-Cremmen, country seat of the von Briest family since the time of Elector Georg Wilhelm, bright sunshine fell on the midday silence in the village street, while on the side facing the park and gardens a wing built on at right angles cast its broad shadow first on a white and green flagstone path, then out over a large roundel of flowers with a sundial at its centre and a border of canna lilies and rhubarb round the edge.

Details

  • Title Effi Briest
  • Author Theodor Fontane; Hugh Rorrison (Translator); Helen Chambers (Translator)
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reissue
  • Pages 256
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Group, London
  • Date July 3, 2001
  • ISBN 9780140447668 / 0140447660
  • Weight 0.42 lbs (0.19 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.8 x 5.08 x 0.54 in (19.81 x 12.90 x 1.37 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Library of Congress subjects Didactic fiction, National characteristics, Prussian
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

About the author

Theodor Fontane (1819-98) was a German novelist and political reporter. Along with Effi Briest, Fontane is remembered for Frau Jenny Treibel, an ironic criticism of middle-class hypocrisy and small-mindedness.

Hugh Rorrison has published extensively on modern German theatre and teaches German film at the University of Leeds.

Helen Chambers organised the first conference on English translations of Fontane in 1992 and teaches German at the University of St Andrews.

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Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)

Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)

by Fontane, Theodor

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Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)
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Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)

by Fontane, Theodor; Rorrison, Hugh [Translator]; Chambers, Helen [Translator];

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Effi Briest
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Effi Briest

by Theodor Fontane

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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Effi Briest

Effi Briest

by Theodor Fontane

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Effi Briest

Effi Briest

by Theodor Fontane

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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Effi Briest

Effi Briest

by Theodor Fontane

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Effi Briest
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Effi Briest

by Fontane, Theodor

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Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)
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Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)

by Theodor Fontane

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Effi Briest

Effi Briest

by Fontane, Theodor; Rorrison, Hugh (tr); Chambers, Helen (tr)

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Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)
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Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)

by Fontane, Theodor

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Paperback
ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780140447668 / 0140447660
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