The escape

the long version

In a spa town snug in the Alps, at the end of the twentieth century, the widowed 78-year-old Haffner has arrived to claim his wife's inheritance: a villa expropriated by the century's totalitarian politics. In the spa hotel, he has tried to develop a mildly successful affair with a hungrily passionate married woman; and a much less successful affair with a capricious young yoga instructor. But gradually, through the tribulations of government bureaucracy, he discovers that he wants this villa, very much. Now that he has to fight for it, he wants it. For how can you ever desert from your past, your family, your history? That has always been the problem of Haffner's life. How do you remain a libertine?