Problematic Characters: A Novel
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers in comparative literature or German literature who need nineteenth-century novel samples
- Readers interested in German realist literature and themes of social transformation
- Translation students studying English translations of nineteenth-century European novels
- Advanced readers patient enough for long novels interweaving psychology and social commentary
Not a good fit for
- Readers of genre fiction who prefer strong plots and fast pacing
- Beginners new to foreign literature who need introductions and notes
- Readers hoping for contemporary German literature or a Chinese translation
Reading tips
- First grasp the basic outline of nineteenth-century German social background; character relationships will then read more smoothly.
- While reading, distinguish narrative passages from discursive ones; the latter can be read more slowly or noted down.
- If used for translation research, select representative chapters to compare with the German original and observe how long sentences are handled.
- Read in stages and briefly restate each character's motives after each chapter to avoid losing focus amid the discursive prose.
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
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About the author
Friedrich von Spielhagen (1829–1911) was a German novelist and a leading representative of the German social novel. He was born in Magdeburg on 24 February 1829 and died in Berlin on 25 February 1911, and from 1878 to 1884 he edited Westermanns Monatshefte. His writing is known for portraying the conflict between democratic ideals and social reality. His major works include Problematic Characters, Through Night to Light, and The Breaking of the Storm, and he also wrote for the theater and on literary theory. This library holds 10 of his works, mostly novels, including the three volumes of The Breaking of the Storm, Hammer and Anvil, Quisisana or, Rest at Last, What the Swallow Sang, and Through Night to Light, whose themes generally revolve around the tension between social ideals and reality.
