Reviewed by Jan Wilm

Some books, like most summer holidays, feel entirely undeserved and all too brief. Such is the case with the delightful Castle Gripsholm, the only novel by the German writer Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935). Known chiefly as a journalist, a waspish (and very witty) critic of the burgeoning Nazi regime, Tucholsky – who at one point circulated texts under five pseudonyms to service his productivity – wrote poems, short stories, and this beauty of a novel. . .