Winner of the European Union Prize in Literature

"Addictive (...) Janna’s plight is that of Jane Eyre and the narrator of du Maurier’s “Rebecca.” She is a young woman who falls in love with an older man so damaged he cannot possibly be good for her. Fencing and love. Battle and desire. The combination transforms Janna’s attempts at love into a match of skill, a game that leaves one bloody and scarred, giving the novel a cruel beauty. (...) One of the most delicious novels I''ve read in ages" Danielle Trussoni for the New York Times Book Review

Germany, 1936. Nazism is taking hold. Janna, a young Dutch girl, has been sent to the embittered aristocrat Egon von Bötticher to train as a fencer. Bötticher is as eccentric as his training methods, yet the pupil soon finds herself falling for her master—a man tormented by a wartime past in which Janna''s father is implicated. Enthralled and disturbed by this dark world with its strange codes of honor and cruel rites of passage, Janna battles to understand her own desires and her part in the strange relationship between her father and the man who has become her obsession. A masterfully written story that sparkles and effervesces.