Stifter's most famous novel - the Magna Carta of escapism by Arno Schmidt. During his naturalistic wanderings, the first-person narrator Heinrich Drendorf encounters his later paternal friend, Baron von Risach, at his estate. There, he not only learns a new way of coping with life and reality but also meets his future wife Natalie and her mother Mathilde Tarona, who is mysteriously connected to Risach. "The Late Summer" is the quintessential Bildungsroman, a touching yet eerie German book from Austria that aims to show the reader the process of becoming human. Walther Killy.