Gertrud von le Fort Books

Newly translated into English for the first time, these four novellas from the acclaimed German writer Gertrud von le Fort are from her later works of historical fiction. Ominous and mysterious, these page-turning stories bring to life momentous chapters in from the past. The Innocents, set in Germany after the Second World War, is a poignant family drama about the horrors of war, the suffering of the innocent, and the demands of justice. The Ostracized Woman traces the fate of a Prussian family at the end of World War II to the heroic deed of an ancestor done centuries before. The Last Meeting imagines the last encounter between Madame de La Valliére and Madame de Montespan, rival mistresses of King Louis XIV of France. The Tower of Constancy leads the reader into the heart of the infamous French prison of the same name while exploring the role of conscience in the religious and philosophical conflicts of the eighteenth-century.

"The Wife of Pilate imagines the slow, arduous transformation of an aristocratic woman, who is mentioned in the New Testament, from a pagan into a Christian saint, as she is now honored in the Byzantine Church. Plus Ultra takes us into the high politics of early sixteenth-century Europe, and into the soul of a lonely young lady at court who knows she has attracted the intoxicating but dangerous attention of the Emperor Charles V himself. At the Gate of Heaven takes the clash between astronomical discoveries and the Roman Inquisition trial of Galileo as the backdrop for harrowing reflections about man's place in the cosmos."--Page 4 of cover.