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Waves

Author: Eduard von Keyserling

Translator: Gary Miller   Cover design: Marie Lane   Cover illustration: Max Liebermann  

'There's a great deal of foreshadowing in the novel, and so much of it seems very simple and straightforward, but it's really quite a remarkably intricate picture: unlike Hans, Keyserling really gets to what's beneath with his almost effortless-seeming easy surface brushstrokes. The exchanges of dialogue are excellent, and the atmosphere very well realised.
Waves is a beautiful novel, appearing, at first glance, to be deceptively simple but in fact astonishingly rich.'

M.A.Orthofer in The Complete Review

Originally published in 1911, and now rereleased over a century later, the world Eduard von Keyserling describes in Waves– of an aristocracy weighed down by generations of tradition and rigid moral codes – seems more distant than even 100 years ago. Rippling with an undercurrent of melancholia, the book is set in an unspecified Baltic Sea fishing village during a summer in the pre-war years. We follow a group of upper-class Germans as they swim, squabble, and strive to interact beyond the boundaries of their strict upbringings. A distant era it may be, yet Keyserling imbues his characters with the mistakes we continue to make, and his vivid descriptions of the interplay between sunlight and sea are gorgeous – a simpler beauty, perhaps, in the midst of a coming storm.

Dafydd Haine in Buzz Magazine

RRP: £9.99

No. of pages: 208

Publication date: 14.02.2019

ISBN numbers:
Paperback
978 1 910213 94 0
Ebook
978 912868 16 2

Rights:
Dedalus World English rights in this translation