A devastating and hilarious comedy about an Edwardian caravan holiday
in Kent
In the early years of the twentieth century, Baron Otto von Ottringel, a
pompous and self-important major in the German army, is about to take a
holiday abroad with his long-suffering second wife. His narrative of
pained bewilderment at the bizarre behavior of the English people with
whom he has chosen to spend a month in a convoy of horse-drawn holiday
caravans is side-splittingly funny. We sympathize deeply with the lady
whom he pursues in a platonic and very one-sided holiday affair, and
even more with Baroness Edelgard, who discovers her own holiday
freedoms, and becomes newly emancipated in her marriage, to the Baron's
horror.
Reflecting frustration with and exasperated affection for German
aristocratic society, The Caravaners reveals the lost world of
European social networks and crusted assumptions that disappeared
forever with the First World War.