The Marquise of O and Other Stories

The Marquise of O and Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist brings together tales that explore the tensions between desire, morality, and fate, framed in the intense and enigmatic style of the early 19th-century German author. The story that gives the volume its title, "The Marquise of O" (1808), presents a respectable widow who, after a mysterious wartime event, discovers she is pregnant without recalling having been intimate with anyone. The scandal surrounding her condition triggers a conflic ...