A count's determination to build a castle by the sea ends in disaster for his family, in this elegantly ironic realist masterpiece from Germany's greatest 19th-century novelist.

“One of the finest literary autopsies of a foundering relationship.” — The New Yorker

As war between Prussia and Denmark brews over the territory of Schleswig-Holstein, a German nobleman is called to serve as a gentleman-in-waiting at the Danish court. Count Holk's life so far has been happy and simple: he married for love, and his pious wife and canny brother have managed his estate so well that he's even been able to carry out his dream, inspired by a romantic ballad, of building a castle by the sea.

But the expense of his architectural folly, the mounting political tensions in the air, and his rustic innocence all conspire to create a tragedy. Seduced by the worldly ways of the Danish courtiers, he begins an affair, and drifts ever farther away from his wife Christine. She, meanwhile, grows more and more serious as she watches the course of wider events. When they meet again in the country, will they be able to find a way back to the love they once shared?

A masterpiece of gentle irony and realist psychological exploration, this book by Germany’s foremost 19th-century novelist is full of wit, compassion and poignant human failure. A delicate balance of the worldly and the provincial, the political and personal, it is one of the greatest works of the great age of narrative fiction.