Book dossier

The caravaners

by Elizabeth von Arnim, Juliane Roemhild

A devasting and hilarious comedy about an Edwardian caravan holiday in Kent: In the early years of the twentieth century, Baron Otto von Ottringel, a pompous and self-important major in the German army, is about to take a holiday abroad with his long-suffering second wife. His narrative of pained bewilderment at the bizarre behavior of the English people with whom he has chosen to spend a month in a convoy or horse-drawn holiday caravans is side-splittingly funny. We sympathize deeply with the lady whom he pursues in a platonic and very one sided holiday affair, and even more with Baroness Edelgard, who discovers her own holiday freedoms, and becomes newly emancipated in her marriage, to the Baron's horror. Reflecting frustration with and exasperated affection for German aristocratic society, The Caravaners reveals the lost world of European social networks and crusted assumptions that disappeared forever with the First World War.