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Effi Briest (Penguin Classics) Paperback – July 1, 2001

by Theodor Fontane (Author), Hugh Rorrison (Translator), Helen Chambers (Translator)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 311 ratings
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In 1919 Thomas Mann hailed Effi Briest (1895) as one of "the six most significant novels ever written." Set in Bismarck's Germany, Fontane's luminous tale of a socially suitable but emotionally disastrous match between the enchanting seventeen-year-old Effi and an austere, workaholic civil servant twice her age, is at once touching and unsettling. Fontane's taut, ironic narrative depicts a world where sexuality and the enjoyment of life are stifled by narrow-mindedness and circumstance. Considered by many to be the pinnacle of the nineteenth-century German novel, Effi Briest is a tale of adultery that ranks with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina and brilliantly demonstrates the truth of the author's comment and "women's stories are generally far more interesting."

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    228 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Classics
  4. Publication date
    July 1, 2001
  5. Reading age
    18 years and up
  6. Dimensions
    7.8 x 5.08 x 0.61 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0140447660
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0140447668
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

This superb new translation at last enables English readers to enjoy the novel. -- The Times, London

About the Author

Theodor Fontane (1819-98) was a German novelist and political reporter. Along with Effi Briest, Fontane is remembered for Frau Jenny Treibel, an ironic criticism of middle-class hypocrisy and small-mindedness.

Hugh Rorrison has published extensively on modern German theatre and teaches German film at the University of Leeds.

Helen Chambers organised the first conference on English translations of Fontane in 1992 and teaches German at the University of St Andrews.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (July 1, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 228 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140447660
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140447668
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.3 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.8 x 5.08 x 0.61 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 311 ratings

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Theodor Fontane

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
311 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Oscar Margain Pitman
5.0 out of 5 stars Pure, deep and modern!
Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2013
Verified Purchase
This edition excels in many aspects: the text, the translation, the introduction and the notes. You will find not a 19th century novel but one from the 20th, written in advance. Fontane doesn't show you directly the action but let you see everything in the mirror of the consequences, attitudes, and symbols. I dare say is cinematographic, also in advance. In Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, there is a very famous scene when the camera doesn't show the action but the nervous slide of one character's eyes observing it, and you feel the same emotion as if you were witnessing the fact. You can find a lot of this in Effi Briest. Sometimes you feel that nothing is happening in the clean text but everything in the story. That is subtlety, finesse, you call it. Effi is one the more genuine characters I ever met. I am writing this, feeling her sorrow.

If you love Mann, you can find the deep influence of Effi Briest in his Buddenbrook's saga. Even a character with that name appears in Effi. Mann also hides to the reader the fact, the action, but the reader is able to have a very clear idea of what's happening. Tony have a lot of Effi's charming facets and Thomas is near to Geert. The maids are also great characters, and reminds me Proust's Françoise.

I strongly recommend to go directly to the novel, finish it and then read the introduction. This way you will feel the glee of deeper understanding without knowing in advance some facts of the plot, and the possible meaning of some symbols. Helen Chambers knows pretty well her stuff. It is as perfect introduction as a dessert. The notes are really good but unfortunately didn't appear the links to them in the text, in my iPad, and I had to go to Wikipedia often.

Two final words (I could talk for hours about Effi Briest). First, this is a novel about human rights, women's rights. Second, very related, is a strong critic to Kantianism. I used to love Kantian moral philosophy when I was around eighteen. Passing time I began to relate it with stiffness and mediocrity. This novel, the very end of it, notwithstanding its half farce tone, is a manifesto against the Kantian way to deal with life, which has deep consequences in social and political matters. We, human beings, are only amateurs, good sports at the best, in moral issues; we can't really believe we can decide as if we were professional rulers about absolutes values. To rely on that, to judge and live relying on that, it's only possible, and even plausible, for those totally deprived of the feeling of love. But "that's too vast a subject."

What would occurred to me if I would read Effi in my younger days?
8 people found this helpful
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Jeanajoan
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting work
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2013
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I had never heard of Fontane before I picked up this novel. This is a fairly engrossing novel if you are already familiar with late 19th century writing. I plan to read more of his books.
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Timothy Haugh
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Discovery
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2020
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I had never heard of Theodor Fontane until reading Daniel Mendelsohn’s essay “Heroine Addict”, which is an excellent discussion of his work. I was intrigued enough to hunt up this novel and give it a try. It is wonderful.

It tells the story of a 17-year-old girl married off to an older man (who, in fact, once romanced Effi’s mother). Though she dreams of achieving a high society life with her husband, she is challenged by the loneliness of her life away from family and friends. During this time and despite a good relationship with her husband, she gets briefly involved with another man’s attentions which will be revealed to her cost some years later.

Fontane is considered a master of German realism. I believe it, for I cannot think of another novel I’ve read that portrays a teenage girl in such a realistic manner with Effi’s combination of dreams and desires as well as morality and fears. Mr. Fontane also portrays German society of this period (the end of the 19th century) with its traditional values on the verge of being altered by modernity with incredible exactness and believability. It is a tour de force.

Things get a bit touch and go in the last pages of the book. My good will was a bit stretched when Effi’s affair was discovered in a way that betrays a stupidity she had not shown up to that point. As a big fan of English Victorian novels, I became concerned that Effi’s fate might be even more difficult to swallow; however, Mr. Fontane handles it well without going overboard into melodrama.

I can’t remember the last time I was as taken with a novel as I was with this one. It is brief and powerful. There are many interesting characters sketched out here, but it is Effi who is the focus imprinted indelibly on the memory. Mr. Fontane is a real master and I will be looking to read some of his other work.
4 people found this helpful
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C. Vode
1.0 out of 5 stars Is Someone Publishing This In His Basement?
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2012
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I ordered this book from Amazon, and I'm going to return it. I'm on page 4 and there are three spelling errors. (1) "Effi wore a bl and white striped dress," (2) "Effi, you really ought to have been an eqstrienne," and (3) "Once I have them on again I shall courtesy like a girl...". It's weird that there is no imprint on the book telling who the publisher is, and no information on who translated the story. With three errors in the first couple of pages, there's no way I'm going to be able to read this book. I'm already skeptical as to whether it's been translated correctly. I assume they are also using copyrighted images on the cover and back, but there's no credit given.

Just flipping through, here are some more errors jumping out:

"a mark of bl blood and old nobility" - page 70
"GieshA1/4bler's party had occurred...." - page 67
"But, I see, this is out of the qstion..." - page 112

Seriously, now that I'm looking through the comments, I see that buried in the reviews are comments by other readers pointing out the same problem. How is this edition still being sold? Whoever has the stockpile of these books in his garage and keeps trying to unload them, I ask you to please stop and immediately place them in a recycling bin.
10 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Dinu M.
5.0 out of 5 stars 👍📖📖📖
Reviewed in Italy on October 23, 2021
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Libro molto interessante e raccomandato per tutti
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Devaansh Mahajan
1.0 out of 5 stars TERRIBLE TRANSLATIONS
Reviewed in India on March 16, 2021
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The text is filled with all sorts of textual errors and mis-translations, making one wonder if this was actually written in German or English. Please invest in another book and save yourself the money. Would refund if i could.
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Devaansh Mahajan
1.0 out of 5 stars TERRIBLE TRANSLATIONS
Reviewed in India on March 16, 2021
The text is filled with all sorts of textual errors and mis-translations, making one wonder if this was actually written in German or English. Please invest in another book and save yourself the money. Would refund if i could.
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Artur
5.0 out of 5 stars Muito bom Para aumentar o vocabulário
Reviewed in Brazil on October 6, 2018
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O livro é mais denso e força mais o entendimento da língua.
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anonyme
5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2014
Verified Purchase
I had been meaning to read this novel for ages, but, when I did, I read it in a completely inappropriate manner, gobbling it down in one sitting on a long-distance flight in the manner of a Dan Brown. That's not at all how it's meant to be consumed; it's a finely crafted, subtle, allusive work that deserves a much more patient reading. I went back at the end and reread the first chapter, saturated in hints and prefigurings, and I decided I should probably read the whole thing again.

One great pleasure of Fontane's novel (1896) is its thematic vicinity to "Madame Bovary" (1856) and "Anna Karenina" (1873-76). If you have read the other two, you should certainly read this, if only for the pleasures of comparison. It's far less savage than Flaubert's novel and less impassioned than Tolstoy's, and in some ways more modern than either (as you might guess from the dates). It's quite thinly textured and minimalist for a nineteenth-century novel--hence my being able to knock it off in a seven-hour flight--but it demands quite a lot of parsing from the reader. It's the kind of novel that has you rifling back through your memory after reading it, trying to work out exactly what was happening at each moment. I can see why academics love Fontane.

Here is an example of the work's ambiguity. The introduction to the edition I read (by Helen Chambers, in Penguin Classics) describes Effi as a delightful, life-force-filled creature, and her older husband Instetten as a dry, oppressive, sexless, almost Casaubon-like figure, who attempts to control her. This surprised me when I read it (retrospectively); it wasn't how I reacted to these figures. For one thing, Instetten seems as much of a victim as Effi is. It's hard to know who destroys whom in the novel. For another, I found Instetten a curiously evasive character, hard to pin down. Chambers seemed to take very seriously a particular interpretation of his actions put forward within the novel (that he cynically exploits a ghost story in order to exert control over his naïve young wife). Yet that interpretation originates with Effi's would-be seducer Crampas, and Effi seems to believe it partly out of bad faith. Filtering out those filters, I simply don't think we have enough information to decide whether Instetten actually believes in the haunting or not.

Protomodernist ambiguity aside, I found Effi Briest fascinating not least for its setting. There are scenes in Berlin, but the dominant part of the novel is set in Kessin, on the Baltic coast in Pomerania, on the outermost fringes of Prussia. Kessin is intriguingly portrayed, as a town of drifters, on the edge of the known universe--surreal and out of kilter in all kinds of ways. When Effi arrives at her marital home, she is disconcerted to see a stuffed shark and a crocodile swinging above her head in the hall, a detail that seems to set the tone for her life there. This is familiar nineteenth-century novel territory--brutal class distinctions, brittle family relationships--but given a peculiar spin by its unfamiliar setting. I can't recommend it enough.
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Helen Beaton
1.0 out of 5 stars Read most recent reviews: corrupt file, do not buy
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2024
Verified Purchase
Something is far wrong here. If you look at the most recent reviews, you will see they consistently highlight a major problem, either with the translation or a corrupt file, or both. The first few pages are normal. So anyone sampling the book would think the translation looked fine.

It is not fine. It is unreadable. It suddenly deteriorates and thereafter no normal person could read it with understanding.

It would appear from earlier reviews that at one point a genuine translation was being offered but something has happened at some point and Amazon (though apparently refunding one customer) has failed to remove the book from sale, has failed to note a significant problem, has failed to take action on what appears to be a deliberate attempt to deceive customers from purchasing a profoundly flawed product.
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