The Resplendent Guest

There’s no such thing as freedom when you’re in love.... Katharina Fröhlich tells of the passionate coming-together of two rebellious temperaments, an alliance rife with ardour and cruelty, yet worth the risk of perdition a thousand times over every step of the way.

A garden on the slopes of a mountain, a botanist’s beautiful heiress, a down-at-heel snob, an Indian employee and a large library. One day a young Croatian, resplendent with quixotic Balkan elegance, intrudes on this idiosyncratic idyll, plunging the unsuspecting narrator into a demonic amour fou.
In the end, the only thing that remains intact is nature; in its infinite abundance it is perhaps the main protagonist of this novel, a book that retains a sense of serenity despite all its attendant anguish.
We all revere the concept of perfection; “only the mediocre is unendurable” as Mark Twain said, and the heroine of this magnificently intelligent and spirited novel takes her cue from that dictum – perfectly aware of the tragi-comic consequences of attempting to live up to such exacting standards.