Castle Gripsholm

The multi-layered allegorical masterpiece that prefigured the rise of National Socialism. A teasing lightness of tone pervades this fable-like short novel about two lovers who, during a summertime idyll in the Swedish countryside, encounter a crying young girl running for her life from a children's home run by a sadistic headmistress. The lovers take the girl back to her parents, but the fact remains: the mistress's grip gets more crushing every time one of her charges tries to slip out of it. Catsle Gripsholm is one of the undisputed classics of modern German literature-a parable of devastating beauty and malice, as exuberant and lyrical in its descriptions of nature and pastoral innocence as it is bitter and undermining in its contempt for the Nazi regime that forced the author into exile, publicly burned his books, and persecuted him until his early death.