Three Women and Alfred Nobel

By Erika Rummel

Vienna, late nineteenth century. Three women are after Nobel.

Ida wants revenge for the death of her lover, who has been killed in an industrial accident at Nobel’s factory. Sophie wants compensation for the abuse she suffered as Nobel’s mistress. Bertie wants Nobel to atone for his lethal invention and spend the profit from his dynamite factories on the advancement of peace.

Was Nobel the ogre they make him out to be or the genius and the philanthropist everyone else sees in him? Are the three women justified in their demands, or are their motives not quite what they appear to be? Their hunt turns into a journey of adventure, desperate measures, and ultimately self-discovery.

Set in fin-de-siecle Vienna, Three Women and Alfred Nobel is a moving novel that explores the social constraints placed on women, the traumatic effects of war on men, and the ethnic tensions that lead to the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

Erika Rummel has taught at the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo. She divides her time between Toronto and Los Angeles and has lived in villages in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria. She is the author of more than a dozen books of non-fiction, among them a translation of Alfred Nobel’s correspondence with his Viennese lover, A Nobel Affair. She is also the author of five previous novels, Playing Naomi, Head Games, The Inquisitor’s Niece, The Painting on Auerperg’s Wall, and The Effects of Isolation on the Brain, an excerpt of which was awarded the Random House Creative Writing Award.