Books like Lenz

Set against the beautiful backdrop of the Vosges Mountains, this chilling novella tells the tale of the real-life writer J.M.R. Lenz’s 19-day stay in Waldersbach in 1778. It describes his wanderings around the mountainous surroundings and his worsening fits of madness that eventually culminate in his removal, under guard, to Strasbourg. Valued both as a chilling exploration of paranoid schizophrenia and an influential forerunner of literary modernism, this existential drama boasts a prose style startlingly ahead of its time.