Baron Bagge

Description

A chimerical masterpiece from one of Austria's most celebrated authors Baron Bagge, a cavalry officer stationed in Eastern Europe during the First World War, receives orders to ride into a platoon of Russian machine guns. But instead of meeting certain death, he and his brigade pass, unscathed, into a strangely peaceful land where festivities are in full swing. There he meets Charlotte Szent-Kiraly, and finds himself falling in a strange, enchanted love - a love harrowed at its edges by the threat of the enemy, and the peculiar fragility of this country's otherworldly peace... Baron Bagge - Alexander Lernet-Holenia's finest work - is a jewel that glimmers with a wintry, exquisite light. A meditation on duty and desire, it is both a perfect ghost story and a perfect love story - a tale to which the word 'haunting' can be applied in every possible permutation. This edition includes a new introduction, and an exchange between Lernet-Holenia and Stefan Zweig.

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 'black-list' and subsequently burned, but after the end of the Second World War, he again became a vital figure in Austrian cultural life.

An utterly captivating account of the absurdity of war, the boundary between life and death, and love as a survival exercise -- Lea Ypi Accomplished and distinctive... blending military narratives, paranormal experiences and erotic obsessions * TLS *