The Escape

There are many stories of Haffner. Haffner is charming, morally suspect, vain, obsessed by the libertine emperors. He is British and Jewish and a widower. But this, the most secret story, is the greatest of them all. In a forgotten spa town snug in the eastern Alps, at the end of the twentieth century, Haffner is seeking a cure, more women, and a villa that once belonged to his late wife. But really he is trying to escape: from his family, his lovers, his history, his entire Haffnerian condition. For Haffner is seventy-eight. In other words, Haffner is too old to be a grown-up. So unravels the plot of The Escape--a swift, sad farce of sexual mayhem by a novelist The New York Times has called "a prodigy."