The Swedish Cavalier is a strange, tightly wound historical fable that begins with a failed nobleman and a condemned highwayman swapping identities—one stepping into privilege, the other into exile—and then refusing to return to what they were.

From that initial exchange, Perutz builds a story that moves through eighteenth-century Europe with the logic of folklore rather than realism, where coincidence feels engineered and consequences arrive with a kind of unfortunate and subtle inevitability.

The novel circles questions of fate, impersonation, guilt, and whether a life can ever truly be escaped once it has been lived, all rendered in a tone that sits somewhere between deadpan and uncanny.

This is the 1993 Harvill (HarperCollins) UK paperback, translated from German by Paul Zohn, in very good condition with clean pages and light shelf wear to the cover.