The Rider on the White Horse (New York Review Books Classics)
The novella was a form beloved of nineteenth-century Germans, who favored the spooky variety. This, from 1888, is one of the greats. Hauke Haien, a young Frisian man, builds a new dike for his town, to shield it from the furies of the North Sea. The townspeople are against him; in the end, so is God, or nature. Like other novellas, “The Rider” is short on psychology but long on atmosphere; no one has ever described storms like Storm. (Hauke on his white horse, gazing at the sea: “Where was the other shore? He stood there face to face with sheer mountains of water.”) Hauke is defeated. Yet in the dark and stormy night outside the inn where this tale is told around the hearth, a ghost rider gallops past on a ghostly white horse. Storm is neglected. This republication of Wright’s gorgeous translation, with a selection of Storm’s other stories, should correct that.Copyright ©2008Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker