My First Wife is Jakob Wassermanns intense powerful account of a marriage and its ruinous collapse translated by the award winning translator of Alone in Berlin Michael Hofmann. It is the story of Alexander Herzog a young writer who goes to Vienna to escape his debts and a failed love affair. There he is pursued by book loving Ganna giddy girlish clumsy eccentric and wild. Dazzled and unnerved by her devotion to him and attracted to the large dowry offered by her wealthy father he thinks he can mould Ganna into what he wants. But no one can control her troubling passions. As their marriage starts to self destruct Herzog will discover that Ganna has resources and determination of which he had no idea and that he can never escape her.