Written in 1897 and one of the author’s last plays. John Gabriel Borkman has been in voluntary seclusion in an upstairs room since serving a prison sentence for embezzlement. His estranged wife Gunhild, her twin sister Ella, his son Erhart, the divorcee Mrs Wilton and Borkman himself, are all trapped in a suffocating atmosphere of their household. There are only two ways out.