Winner of the European Union Prize in Literature
"Addictive (...) Janna's plight is that of Jane Eyre and the narrator
of du Maurier's "Rebecca." She is a young woman who falls in love with
an older man so damaged he cannot possibly be good for her. Fencing and
love. Battle and desire. The combination transforms Janna's attempts at
love into a match of skill, a game that leaves one bloody and scarred,
giving the novel a cruel beauty. (...) One of the most delicious novels
I've read in ages" Danielle Trussoni for the New York Times Book
Review
Germany, 1936. Nazism is taking hold. Janna, a young Dutch girl, has
been sent to the embittered aristocrat Egon von Bötticher to train as a
fencer. Bötticher is as eccentric as his training methods, yet the pupil
soon finds herself falling for her master--a man tormented by a wartime
past in which Janna's father is implicated. Enthralled and disturbed by
this dark world with its strange codes of honor and cruel rites of
passage, Janna battles to understand her own desires and her part in the
strange relationship between her father and the man who has become her
obsession. A masterfully written story that sparkles and effervesces.
