The Gilded Chalet: Off-piste in Literary Switzerland

by Padraig Rooney

In the summer of 1816 paparazzi trained their telescopes on Byron and the Shelleys across Lake Geneva. Mary Shelley babysat and wrote Frankenstein. Byron dieted and penned The Prisoner of Chillon. His doctor, Polidori, was dreaming up The Vampyre. Together they put Switzerland on the map.

From Rousseau to Nabokov, le Carre to Conan Doyle, Hemingway to Hesse to Highsmith, Switzerland has always provided a refuge for writers as an escape from world wars, oppression, tuberculosis... or marriage. For Swiss writers from the country was like a gilded prison. The Romantics, the utopians and other spiritual seekers viewed Switzerland as a land of milk and honey, as nature's paradise. In the twentieth century, spying in neutral Switzerland spawned the finest espionage and crime fiction.

Part detective work, part treasure chest, The Gilded Chalet takes you on a grand tour of the birthplace of our best-loved stories, revealing how Switzerland became the landscape of our imagination.

• ISBN10: 1857889878
• ISBN13: 9781857889871
• Publish Date: 19 November 2015 (first published 5 November 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
• Edition: Digital original
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

Well, this was a fun and informative look at Switzerland through the ages and through the lense of a reader - we get to hear stories of way too many writers to list, that have traveled to Switzerland or are Swiss and have traveled elsewhere. The only common denominator was, you guessed it, Switzerland.

I'll keep the book as a reference because some of the backstories were interesting but I know I will have forgotten them by next weekend.

If there was one thing I missed, it would be more examples of how Switzerland or the Swiss theme had merged into the writers' work. There were some like the scene on the ice in Frankenstein or Conan Doyle's seemingly odd choice for Holmes adventures at the Reichenbach Falls, but I would have liked more of that sort of thing- and less about people's love lives. I mean, surely after reading about Lord Byron's escapades, nothing will have the same entertainment value...