Lena leaves her metropolitan dream behind to take a menial job at the snow-bound sanatorium, the Schloss Seeblick.

1933: Still struggling to come terms with the loss of so many friends on the Eastern Front, Anton, now an established writer, is commissioned by a magazine to visit the mysterious Schloss Seeblick.

Read this masterful, generation-spanning love story, set in Austria as it recovers from one war and awaits the coming of another.

'Wistful, yearning and wise' Elizabeth Day

1914: Aspiring journalist Anton arrives in Vienna where he meets Delphine, a woman of deep secrets. Anton is entranced by the light of first love, until his country declares war on hers.

1927: For Lena, life in a small town has been cosseted and cold. When her love affair with a young lawyer crumbles, she leaves to take a post at the snow-capped sanatorium, the Schloss Seeblick.

1933: Anton is sent to write about the mysterious Schloss Seeblick. In this place, on the banks of a silvery lake where the roots of human suffering are laid bare, two people will see each other as if for the first time...

'Fascinating... A rich, dark story' The Times


Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times bestseller, September 2023