On Tangled Paths

<p>A moving love story and a vivid depiction of Berlin in the 1870s from Germany's greatest nineteenth-century novelist Theodor Fontane.<br><br>Lene is a beautiful orphaned young seamstress and Botho is a handsome aristocratic cavalry officer. They are in love yet know they have only a short time together as society deems their relationship impossible and refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of their feelings. But while Botho appears to have a glittering life ahead of him the love he feels may yet be his undoing. Published in 1887 <i>On Tangled Paths</i> caused a scandal on publication with its portrayal of a sexual affair across the classes and is a taut flawless masterpiece.<br><br>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 and worked as a freelance journalist and 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 <i>Before the Storm</i> was published when he was fifty-eight and was followed by sixteen further novels of which <i>Effi Briest</i> <i>No Way Back</i> and <i>On Tangled Paths</i> are all published in Penguin Classics. He died in 1898.<br><br>Peter James Bowman completed a PhD on Fontane at Cambridge University and now works as a writer and translator. <br><br>'<i>On Tangled Paths</i> has the flawless logic and beautiful design of the novella at its best' - Paul Binding <i>The Spectator</i><br><br>'There is an undertow of sadness to this novel yet to read it is a joy for its humanity subtlety and visual immediacy' - Ruth Pavey <i>The Independent</i><br><br>'Theodor Fontane's first true masterpiece; it has a perfect beginning a perfect ending and no superfluous sentence in between' - Henry Garland</p>