Joseph von Eichendorff 
Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing 

Eichendorff’s prose masterpiece – a picaresque account of the wanderings of a young man who leaves home after a row with his father, and who eventually finds love with the girl of his dreams – is one of the best-known classics of German literature. Deeply imbued with the style and sentiment of German Romanticism, and philosophical and poetic in its approach to nature and existence, "Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing" is at once an exhilarating romp and an exemplary distillation of nineteenth-century thought.