All Things That Deserve To Perish
A Novel of Wilhelmine Germany
by Dana Mack
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Pub Date Oct 25 2020 | Archive Date Feb 12 2021
Dana Mack | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
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Description
The year is 1896, and Elisabeth ('Lisi') von Schwabacher, the gifted daughter of a Jewish banker, returns home to Berlin from piano study in Vienna. Though her thoughts are far from matrimony, she is pursued by two noblemen impressed as much by her stunning wealth as by her prodigious intellect and musical talent.
Awakened to sudden improvements in the opportunities open to women, Lisi balks at her mother's expectation that she will contract a suitable bourgeois marriage, and settle down to a life as a wife and mother. In a bid to emancipate herself once and for all from that unwelcome fate, she resolves to have an affair with one of her aristocratic suitors -- an escapade that, given her rigid social milieu, has tragic consequences for both her and her family.
All Things That Deserve to Perish is a novel that penetrates the constrained condition of women in Wilhelmine Germany, as well as the particular social challenges faced by German Jews, who suffered invidious discrimination long before Hitler's seizure of power. It is also a compassionate rumination on the distractions of sexual love, and the often unbearable strains of a life devoted to art.
Advance Praise
"Mack's elegant prose summons the era by evoking the literature of the time period. ...Lisi is a character worthy of Edith Wharton, compellingly driven and finely flawed...
A rich tale set in the underexplored Wilhelmine Germany. ...Readers will be thoroughly immersed in the time period and fully invested in the fate of its hero."
—Kirkus Reviews
"[A] vivid and incisive historical novel, set in Germany and Austria in the 1890s.
Mack's prose often soars, and her scenes and letters pulse with witty remarks and jolts of hard truth. ..Readers invested in the milieu or in historic domestic tragedy will find much to relish. Lovers of historic fiction may savor this evocative novel of a woman's romances and ambitions in 19th century Germany."
—Publishers Weekly Booklife
“An unforgettable heroine...and a fascinating story set in Berlin during the twilight years of the 19th century. In this beautifully researched, erotically charged novel, Mack wrestles with a menace that foretells the rise of Nazism a few decades later.”
—Adrienne McDonnell, author of The Doctor and the Diva
“A learned and vivid portrait of a time and place, and a gripping story about love in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.”
—Cheryl Mendelson, author of the Morningside Heights trilogy
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781735302607 |
| PRICE | $15.95 (USD) |
Available on NetGalley
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