Penguin Classics In 1919 Thomas Mann hailed Effi Briest (1895) as one of the six most significant novels ever written. Set in Bismarck"s Germany, Fontane"s luminous tale of a socially suitable but emotionally disastrous match between the enchanting seventeen-year-old Effi and an austere, workaholic civil servant twice her age, is at once touching and unsettling. Fontane"s taut, ironic narrative depicts a world where sexuality and the enjoyment of life are stifled by narrow-mindedness and circumstance. Considered by many to be the pinnacle of the nineteenth-century German novel, Effi Briest is a tale of adultery that ranks with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina and brilliantly demonstrates the truth of the author"s comment and women"s stories are generally far more interesting.