Mars in Aries

Mars in Aries (a literal translation of the German original title, Mars im Widder) is the most widely known novel by the Austrian writer Alexander Lernet-Holenia. It was written during the winter of 1939-1940 and is about the author's combat experience during the invasion of Poland by the German Wehrmacht at the start of World War II. The novel draws its disturbing quality from an intimate interlacing of precisely described authentic combat episodes with a concept of a pervasive Otherworld that merges with our reality in a way that makes it difficult to determine whether one has already transgressed its borders. It stands in the tradition of the early 20th-century Austrian psychological novel genre of which Schnitzler's Dream Story and Perutz' are other famous examples.

Mars in Aries

Mars in Aries (a literal translation of the German original title, Mars im Widder) is the most widely known novel by the Austrian writer Alexander Lernet-Holenia. It was written during the winter of 1939-1940 and is about the author's combat experience during the invasion of Poland by the German Wehrmacht at the start of World War II. The novel draws its disturbing quality from an intimate interlacing of precisely described authentic combat episodes with a concept of a pervasive Otherworld that merges with our reality in a way that makes it difficult to determine whether one has already transgressed its borders. It stands in the tradition of the early 20th-century Austrian psychological novel genre of which Schnitzler's Dream Story and Perutz' are other famous examples.