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.
