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. Considered to be Fontane's greatest novel, Effi Briest is a humane, unsentimental portrait of a young woman torn between her duties as a wife and mother and the instincts of her heart.

Author Biography

Theodor Fontane (1819-98) was a German novelist and potitical reporter. Along with EFFI BRIEST, Fontane is remembered for FRAU JENNY TREIBEL (1892), 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.