Robert, devoted yet extremely naïve, falls into the seductive web of Charlotte's treacherous daughter, while Louise discovers an unexpected ally in Count André de Lacy, another French-Irish cousin she had briefly met back in Ireland. The hypocrisy of her cousins' social circle is made plain to Louise: 'Everyone was talking philosophy and the rights of man, but she had noticed that as soon as one applied these ideas to real people, one met with a blank stare, as if some gross vulgarity had been committed.' Once in France, however, the siblings prove to be no match for their selfish, snappish relations and the decadent artificiality of the Parisian aristocracy. Louise's mission is to obtain her rightful inheritance from her grandmother's cousin, Charlotte. In 1779, their weak-willed father, Maurice, acquiesces to his second wife's wishes by sending them abroad to live with their French cousins. Louise and Robert Brien, sister and brother, come from a long-established family of Catholic gentry, one whose rights to their ancestral lands are tolerated only because of their connections to powerful English relations. Wherever they go, they continue to love and yearn for a land that didn't always welcome them. Its soil remains in their blood, even though they seek a new start elsewhere, even though their old lives brought them little happiness. Memories of Ireland haunt her novel's characters. Noted Irish writer Eilís Dillon's novel expresses the adventurous spirit and plaintive longing found in those words. Wild Geese… the romantic name given to Irish Catholics who fled their homeland for France and elsewhere in the wake of continued persecution in the 17th and 18th centuries.

More on the strong female protagonist theme.ĭillon, Eilís.

A visual preview of the spring and summer seasons.Reviews of obscure books: Eilís Dillon's Wild Geese.John David Pizer (2011): Imagining the Age of Goethe in German Literature, 1970-2010. Das Hamlet-Komplott, Piper, Munich 2010.Das Erlkönig-Manöver, Piper, Munich 2007.Der Schachautomat, Piper, Munich 2005.

Starting in 2005, he has written four historical novels on topics such as the chess-playing turk, the fabled Sängerkrieg and the friendship of Goethe and Schiller.

He went to journalism school in Berlin and studied North American and German literature at the Free University of Berlin before attending the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin to become a screenwriter. Robert Löhr was born in Berlin and brought up in Bremen and Santa Barbara, California. His work has been largely collected by libraries. ( The Secrets of the Chess Machine in the UK). He is best known for his novel Der Schachautomat, translated into English by Anthea Bell as The Chess Machine. Robert Löhr (born 17 January 1973) is a German novelist and screenwriter.

The Chess Machine by Robert Löhr