Love

"Three of Love's six novellas, along with a prologue entitled "The Wanderer," are presented here. Like many progressive writers of the nineteenth century, Sacher-Masoch was intrigued by the variations of love that did not conform easily to the era's conventional portraits of married happiness and explored those themes in the collection. "Don Juan of Kolomea," who finds himself deprived of his wife's affections after the birth of their child, seeks out erotic liaisons with any desirable woman who might cross his path even while he recognizes their meaninglessness. "The Man Who Re-Enlisted," spurned by his peasant girl who chooses a rich husband over her own happiness, continues to love her from afar and develops a deep understanding of the unhappy choices poverty, class, and gender can force upon a woman. Finally, "Moonlight," portrays a woman who, her mind awakened by another man's intellectual ambitions and social idealism, betrays her husband but is doomed to continue living with him after he kills her lover in a duel."--Jacket.