2 h 43 minAudiobook10 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 2 h 43 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when the longing for love pulls against comfort, duty, and good sense?
In The Courtesan Jamaica, Hans Bethge brings together six tales of desire, jealousy, and the bittersweet search for love. These short stories belong to the world of early twentieth-century German writing, where questions of love, taste, and feeling come to the fore. Affection is the hope; the troubles that follow desire give that hope its uneasy edge.
Bethge is a poet as well as a storyteller, and this collection invites you to read for mood rather than speed. Its central concerns are intimate: the pull toward another person, the fear of losing them, and the price of wanting love. Let each tale hold your attention on its own, without the sprawling demands of a long novel.
What you’ll discover
- Desire with a price Explore the tension between the pull of affection and the claims of duty.
- Jealousy close at hand Consider how fear of loss shadows the longing to be loved.
- A poet's ear Meet the prose of a writer whose work also embraces poetry.
- Six brief encounters Give each short tale room to draw you into its mood.
- Love's uneasy questions Spend time with desire, feeling, and the bittersweet pursuit of affection.
Who will love it
Readers who love short love stories with moonlit gardens, sea air and shifting moods will feel at home here. It suits anyone who enjoys a vivid scene, a sharp portrait of a lover, and a tale told in one sitting.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A courtesan who steals a man's heart
- A painter who sees only pictures
- A stolen photograph comes between lovers
- A doctor loses his way in the fog
- A girl who loves freely and cannot stay
- A wedding that stirs a proud heart
Who’s who
- JamaicaA graceful courtesan who is proud and can be aloof, she holds a Swedish count but is drawn to an Englishman at the seaside.
- Konrad TedrahnA painter at Castle Carnin who sees every person as a possible picture and fails to notice what a young guest feels.
- Leonore HelfingerA proud seventeen-year-old from Lübeck, Anna's school friend, who is cool with the painter yet longs to be seen as more than a subject.
- GregorA frail medical student who loves Mimi, then falls under the spell of a photograph of her at sixteen.
- MimiA linen shop salesgirl with beautiful hands who loves Gregor and senses that his heart has moved elsewhere.
- EbethA light-hearted office girl who spends everything on flowers and kindness, loves honestly, and has a delicate heart.
- FridolinA calm, fair-haired friend of the groom who loves the sea and his freedom, and is stirred by a proud guest.
- Asta von SebnitzA cool East Prussian noblewoman in blue who guards her pride while feeling more for Fridolin than she will show.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle, with the type as large as you like.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 2 h 43 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 10 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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La cortesana Jamaica
by Hans Bethge
Six tales of young love in Germany, where a painter, a student and a restless friend each hold back their hearts.
Easy read2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Courtesan Jamaica is a book of six short tales by the German writer Hans Bethge. Each one is a small love story set in the Germany of the early twentieth century, and each is about a heart that wants something and cannot quite hold it.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A courtesan who steals a man's heart
The first tale is told by a man who sees a woman walking down a city street on an early summer day. She wears a large black hat whose feathers sway like the dark sails of a ship. Her face has a southern oval and a faint brown tint that recalls a meerschaum pipe just lit, and so she is called Jamaica. He follows her for blocks until she climbs into a carriage and is gone.
When he sees her again, a friend tells him what she is. She is a courtesan, who has had a prince of the House of Hohenzollern, then an artist, and now a Swedish count. The friend introduces them and slips away, leaving the two alone. They sit at a café, he buys red carnations from a flower girl, and she draws iced chocolate through a straw. They agree to meet at the circus.
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What is The Courtesan Jamaica about?
It is a collection of six short love stories by Hans Bethge, set in early twentieth-century Germany. Each tale follows a man and a woman whose feelings pull them apart through pride, jealousy, carelessness or fear.
Who is Jamaica in the book?
Jamaica is a courtesan with a southern face and a brown tint to her skin, like a lit meerschaum pipe. She is proud and graceful, and she travels to the Baltic sea with the narrator.
What are the six stories in the book?
They are Jamaica the Courtesan, Castle Carnin, The Beloved's Portrait, Foggy Night, Ebeth and The Friend's Wedding. Each stands alone, with its own people and setting, so you can read them one at a time.
The author
Hans Bethge
German poet
Hans Bethge was a German poet born in Dessau in 1876. He lived in Berlin and died in Göppingen in 1946. He wrote poetry and prose, including The Courtesan Jamaica. His collection The Chinese Flute, published in 1907, contained German adaptations of Chinese poems based on translations.
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