"As a young writer, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895) planned an ambitious cycle of thirty-six novellas grouped around six themes (love, property, the state, war, work, and death), but only the first volume, entitled LOVE, was completed as planned. 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. His work is notable for its psychological insight in a pre-Freudian era and for his ability to evoke the exoticism of the "Wild East" of the Habsburg empire's Slavic territories. Both strengths are vividly displayed in this volume." Four novellas taken from two cycles of novellas entitled Die Liebe and Das Vermeachtnis Kains.