Carsten the Trustee, By Theodor Storm,trans Denis Jackson

Like other German novelists of his day, Theodor Storm (1817-1888) was keen to write about the realities of rural and small-town life. Set in his native Schleswig-Holstein, his fiction largely chronicled the plight of previously prosperous farming families ruined by the Napoleonic Wars.

Included in this selection of four novellas is the first English translation of Storm's The Last Farmstead – an unsettling tale depicting the decline of a landowning family and an unforeseen tragedy. Providing the atmospheric backdrop to these slightly supernatural stories of hardship and familial loss are North Friesland's coastal marshlands and flat seas. Denis Jackson's empathetic translation and informative notes breathe new life into these neglected narratives.