Why would people
trouble themselves with the facts, when fiction is so much more enticing?
Designed as a
historical novel, The Masochist forges an intimate portrait of a young,
tenacious woman who, in uncertain times at the end of the 19th century, chose
an uncertain path – the only path that could lead her to freedom. On Christmas
Eve 1874, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whom history would remember as the most
famous masochist, left his home in Bruck an der Mur in Austria for the unknown.
The novel surmises he didn’t come back alone, but brought with him a new family
member: a tiny red-haired girl he found in the forests around Lemberg/ Lviv. The
Masochist is the memoir of Nadezhda Moser, the woman this little girl
becomes, a fictional character who forces her way among
the historical figures of the time.
This is a
pseudo-autobiographical novel that returns post-postmodernism to modernism and offers
an intimate portrayal of the limits of women's desire and freedom against the
backdrop of ethnic, class and gender tensions of an empire that hasn't yet
perceived its decline had already begun.