Our preeminent historian of Germany turns, in A Scandal in Königsberg (Allen Lane), to an intriguing sequence of events that has fascinated for many years. In 1830 Königsberg, now the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, was a somewhat sleepy backwater, famous mainly for having once been the home of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. But its tranquility was shattered by a religious scandal, implying that beneath the town's somnolent surface there were dark erotic currents and wrenching betrayals of trust. Clark’s deft treatment of the material, combining erudition and humour, makes this forgotten piece of history very much a tale for our times. Clark was in conversation with acclaimed mythographer, historian and iconologist Marina Warner.

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