Overview

Banned by the Nazis in 1941 and almost lost, this unflinching psychological novel about the German invasion of Poland is restored here in a superb revised translation Vienna, 1939. Count Wallmoden, an officer and veteran of the First World War, is preparing to take part in a mysterious 'military exercise'. One evening, while off duty, he meets the austere and beautiful Baroness Pistohlkors, whose secretive nature and elusive circle of acquaintances suggest that things - including the 'military exercise' - are not quite what they seem. Forced to leave the Baroness, Wallmoden promises to return for a tryst once his tour of duty is over, only to discover his unit has been mobilised for war. He finds himself over the border, marching across Europe - and, more seductively, stumbling to and fro over the border that separates the living from the dead. One constant remains- in this world or the next, he must keep his tryst with Baroness Pistohlkors. Simultaneously a ghost story drawing on the phantasms of the unconscious mind, a thriller where the erotic and the supernatural converge, and a shockingly realist account of the German Wehrmacht's invasion of Poland, the novel Mars in Aries was refused a publishing permit by the Nazis, hinting as it did at the existence of an Austrian resistance. The book's entire print run was put into storage and subsequently destroyed by an Allied air raid. Reprinted from the author's proofs after the war, Mars in Aries is one of Alexander Lernet-Holenia's finest and most celebrated novels.

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9780241674468

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Alexander Lernet-Holenia (Author) Alexander Lernet-Holenia was born in Vienna in 1897. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War and became a protege of Rainer Maria Rilke. During his life he wrote poetry, novels, plays and was a successful screenwriter. His books were included on the first Nazi blacklist and subsequently burned, but after the end of the Second World War, he again became a vital figure in Austrian cultural life. Robert Dassanowsky (Translator) Robert Dassanowsky (1965-2023) was Professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, an independent film producer, former President of the Austrian Studies Association, and author of Austrian Cinema (2005); New Austrian Film, ed. (2011); World Film Locations- Vienna, ed. (2012); Screening Transcendence- Film under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope 1933-1938 (2018). He was a member of the European Film Academy and fellow of the Royal Historical Society. John Barrett (Translator) John S. Barrett (1935) is a translator, reviewer and retired cardiologist. He has translated Grete Weil, Heimito von Doderer, Christa Wolf and Hanna Johannsen, among others. His translations have won the American Literary Translators' Association Award, the Koret Foundation Award and the Batchelder Award for Children's Literature.

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