THE DYKEMASTER
By
A new translation of a famous 1888 novella previously published as The Rider on the Grey. Storm's intricate fable surveys the life and career of an embattled engineer whose innovative construction of a dyke earns him the scorn and mistrust of the Friesian townspeople he means only to serve, and inexorably shapes and shadows the rest of his life. This is a marvelous work, effortlessly lifted to eerie supernatural heights. While its complex method of narration (there are three ingeniously related narrators) stresses the story's mystery and remoteness, Storm's mastery of the details of dyke-building and bourgeois political intrigue ground it firmly in recognizable reality. There is nothing better in German fiction prior to the work of Thomas Mann.