The Ugly Duchess

For over a century, Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958) remains one of the most popular German authors in the world. And this is one of those cases where the reasons for long-lasting readers’ love are perfectly clear: his work is one of the peaks of the historical novel genre. A true master, Feuchtwanger has a rare ability to create an engrossing narrative—deeply and in detail immersing himself in the intricacies of historical events. In his novels—even those devoted to the most distant epochs and little-known episodes—the author is always careful with the reader: the reality he creates is convincing, yet the countless historical details he weaves into the narrative so carefully and thoughtfully that most of them turn out to be understandable and waiting to be interpreted, as if they were events of the reader’s own era. Feuchtwanger never depicts history for its own sake: every one of his novels is always a subtle and precise, thought-provoking—or polemical—observation of the deep processes that governed the course of human life before, that govern it in any time.

The story of the novel “The Ugly Duchess Margaret Maultasch” (1923) takes place—in the 14th century in Tyrol. Behind the captivating plot lies reflection on the human personality and the search for one’s place in society, with its prescriptions and stereotypes—especially sharp since women play the central role in both books, and they find the boundaries of the medieval world’s assigned place too tight.