Mars in Aries By Alexander Lernet-Holenia, Translated by Robert von Dassanowsky and Elisabeth Littell Frech

As Alexander Lernet-Holenia's (1897-1976) Mars in Aries had received magazine serialization but was immediately banned upon its publication in book form in 1941 (republished in 1947 based on a found manuscript proof). Although this story of a romance between an aristocratic Wehrmacht officer and a mysterious woman in Vienna set against the 1939 invasion of Poland was deemed unacceptable fare for Third Reich readership due to its ambiguity, lack of heroic military images, and the sympathetic portrayal of a suffering Poland, the novel's actual purpose and highly subversive quality were hardly suspected by the Ministry of Propaganda. Richly constructed with cultural, historical, literary, linguistic, philosophical, and metaphysical references that counter Nazism and expose the premeditation behind the attack on Poland, the novel suggests the survival of Austrian identity, the intermeshing of existentialism and fate, the duality of existence, and the qualities of resistance. Written with great formal elegance, subtlety and humanistic erudition, and presented here in its first English translation, Mars in Aries is a standout among war and resistance novels. It also underscores Alexander Lernet-Holenia's place in the Austrian literary canon alongside such writers as Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, Musil and Broch.