Castle Firlight: A School Story
About
A tender, luminous novel about first love, quiet rebellion, and the sacred weight of memory.
When Christophe—twelve years old, royal by birth but exiled by silence—is sent to Schloss Tannenlicht, a cold boarding school deep in the pine forests of northern Germany, he enters a world of ancient rites and rigid tradition. Boys are named like chess pieces. Secrets are whispered in candlelight. And intimacy, if it dares exist, must hide in plain sight.
In chapel and sacristy, Christophe falls for Francis—a choirboy of feathers, field notes, and unspoken grace. Their love is reverent, shy, and quietly transformative. But when Francis dies on a windswept island in search of a raven’s egg, grief becomes Christophe’s only companion.
Until Friedrich.
Half-wild, defiant, and utterly unexpected, Friedrich appears on the frozen edge of the school grounds like a question no one dared ask. What begins in secrecy deepens into truth. Together, they defy the codes that bind them—lighting candles that others tried to keep unlit.
Spanning snow rituals, stolen glances, and a chess game with everything at stake, Schloss Tannenlicht is a hymn to love that lingers, memory that blesses, and the quiet courage it takes to be fully seen.
For fans of Alan Hollinghurst, André Aciman, or the melancholic beauty of Stefan Zweig.