The Gilded Chalet

The Gilded Chalet

In the summer of 1816 paparazzi trained their telescopes on Byron and the Shelleys across Lake Geneva. Mary Shelley babysat and wrote <i>Frankenstein</i>. Byron dieted and penned <i>The Prisoner of Chillon</i>. His doctor, Polidori, was dreaming up <i>The Vampyre</i>. Together they put Switzerland on the map.<BR> <BR>From Rousseau to Nabokov, le Carré to Conan Doyle, Hemingway to Hesse to Highsmith, Switzerland has always provided a refuge for writers as an escape from world wars, oppression, tuberculosis... or marriage. For Swiss writers from the country was like a gilded prison. The Romantics, the utopians and other spiritual seekers viewed Switzerland as a land of milk and honey, as nature's paradise. In the twentieth century, spying in neutral Switzerland spawned the finest espionage and crime fiction.<BR> <BR>Part detective work, part treasure chest, <i>The Gilded Chalet</i> takes you on a grand tour of the birthplace of our best-loved stories, revealing how Switzerland became the landscape of our imagination.