Der schwedische Reiter

A story of mistaken identity, love and guilt in the form of a perfectly constructed thriller. The world is out of joint in this historical-fantastic novel: the war between August the Strong and Charles XII of Sweden has Silesia in a stranglehold around 1700. Regiments crisscross the country and practice merciless lynching. Farmers, but also gangs of robbers and vagabonds fight for bare survival. A Christian bishop offers the persecuted last refuge: In his quarries and smelting furnaces "the living dead, who fled to hell from the gallows, groan at carts". Two men, a noble deserter and a nameless vagabond, stand at the crossroads. The path of the first leads to the enemy Swedish army, to war glory, wealth and to the beautiful Maria Agneta, his cousin. The path of the other leads into the fire.