The Man Who Sees Ghosts Book

A young German prince of Protestant faith becomes embroiled in a diabolical net of political intrigue and religious conspiracy. During his stay with the prince in Venice, the Count von O**** witnesses how the fragile and impressionable character of his young companion falls victim to the insidious machinations of his enemies whose aim it is to get him to convert to Catholicism and then to overthrow the Protestant rulers of his princedom. His faith is challenged by supernatural apparitions and his moral steadfastness is subverted by the lure of gambling and tragic love affairs. Fate takes its course and steers mercilessly towards a calamitous climax of violence and death.

Schiller's enigmatic novel fragment was written between 1786 and 1789. It proved to be one of his most popular works, mainly because of the masterly way it treated the then topical theme of experiments with the supernatural.

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller -- dramatist, poet, novelist, translator and historian -- was born in 1759 in Marbach and died of tuberculosis in Weimar in 1805. The son of an army officer, he was forced to enter a military academy and later became an army surgeon in Stuttgart. In 1782, the Duke of Wurttemberg heard about his play, The Robbers, and forbade him to write. Schiller deserted and fled to Mannheim, where he made his living as a court playwright, and then Leipzig, where his History of the Revolt of the United Netherlands (1788) led to his -appointment as professor at the University of Jena.

In 1793, he moved to Weimar, where he collaborated with his great friend Goethe to make the Weimar Theatre one of the most prestigious theatrical houses in Germany. His plays include Intrigue and Love, Don Carlos, The Wallenstein Trilogy, Mary Stuart, The Maid of Orleans and William Tell and his poem "Ode to Joy" was set to music by Beethoven.