The Rider on the White Horse
  • Published: 15 February 2009
  • ISBN: 9781590173015
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $39.99

The Rider on the White Horse

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“The Rider on the White Horse” begins as a ghost story. A traveler along the coast of the North Sea is caught in dangerously rough weather. Offshore he glimpses a spectral rider rising and plunging in the wind and rain. Taking shelter at an inn, the traveler mentions the apparition, and the local schoolmaster volunteers a story.

The story is both simple and subtle, and its peculiar power is to surprise us slowly. It is a story of determination, of a young man, Hauke Haien, living in a remote community (Storm depicts the village with the luminous precision of a Vermeer), who is out to make a name for himself and to remake his world. It is a story of devotion and disappointment, of pettiness and superstition, of spiritual pride and ultimate desolation, and of the beauty and indifference of the natural world. It is a story that opens up in the end to uncover the foundation of savagery on which human society rests.

Theodor Storm’s great novella, which will remind readers of the work of Thomas Hardy, is one of the supreme masterpieces of German literature. It is here limpidly translated by the American poet James Wright, along with seven other shorter works, including the lyrical love story “Immensee.”
  • Published: 15 February 2009
  • ISBN: 9781590173015
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $39.99
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Praise for The Rider on the White Horse

  • "Like Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest, Storm's book combines a story of societal pressures with a touch of the supernatural...There is plenty of eerie Germanic mood here, but there is also a fine and tragic story of a man who follows his own path to its final, terrible end and people who fail to recognize sacrifice." --Publishers Weekly
  • "Theodor Storm, master of the 19th-century novella." --The Spectator
  • "A powerful, tragic tale of man's battle with the elements...and of an individual at odds with the narrow society around him. The almost visionary evocation of nature...are the key to this classic short novel by a man who was also a distinguished poet." --The Irish Times
  • "Storm is a writer for whom most lovers of German literature have a soft spot. He is a master of atmosphere, unique in his ability to endow the details of realistic description with the fragile aura of transience precisely because they are so vividly captured." --A Companion to German Literature
  • "Immediately recognised as a masterpiece of romantic idealism. Its setting is the eerie coast of North Friesland, vulnerable to frightening storms and under perpetual threat from the sea...In accordance with the genre, of which this is a brilliant example, the plot includes a suitably creepy ghost storm." --Sunday Telegraph
  • "Translations of the high standard as this one are more than ever in demand." --Mary Garland, editor of The Oxford Companion to German Literature

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