Effi Briest
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Students of German literature who need to study a representative realist work
- Readers interested in nineteenth-century European society and marriage ethics
- Book club members looking for a classic novel that invites deep discussion
- Readers with some German who want to try a public-domain original
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking fast-paced plots or strong suspense
- Those with no German at all and no parallel translation at hand
- Readers who prefer light entertainment and avoid heavy social themes
Reading tips
- Read through once to grasp the story, then revisit key dialogues and scenes, noting the narrator's restrained tone.
- Jot down as you read how social mores constrain the characters' speech and behavior, to help trace the causes of the tragedy.
- If German is difficult, read alongside a reliable translation, focusing on the rhythm of the original dialogue.
- Well suited to chapter-by-chapter book club discussion, each session centered on one character's choices.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
FAQ
What language is the e-book in?
Can I read this without any German?
Is this book suitable for classroom use?
Comments
Find this book
This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
Theodor Fontane (1819–1898) was a German writer of critical realism and a poet, born in Neuruppin, Brandenburg. He worked early in life as a pharmacist and journalist, reported from England, and later served as drama critic for the Vossische Zeitung; these experiences gave him rich material for social observation. In his later years he turned to fiction, and his major works include Effi Briest, Schach von Wuthenow, Der Stechlin, and the four-volume Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg. His writing often draws on Berlin bourgeois society and local Brandenburg life, with delicate psychological portrayal and attention to such real issues as marriage and honour; his restrained, ironic style earned him recognition as a founder of the modern German realist novel. The library holds seven of his works.
