Alexander Lernet-Holenia

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Baron Bagge, a cavalry officer during the First World War, receives orders from his unhinged commander to ride into Russian machine guns. But instead of meeting certain death, he and his brigade pass, unscathed, into a peaceful, otherworldly country where festivities are in full swing... Alexander Lernet-Holenia, championed in his lifetime...

A deliciously deranged thriller about supernatural vengeance and postwar guilt, by one of Austria's most celebrated writers. Alexander Jessiersky, Austrian aristocrat and shipping magnate, finds the Nazis distasteful. However, in war and in business, distaste can lead to negligence. When Jessiersky's board of directors sends his mysterious neighbour, Count Luna, to a concentration camp on trumped-up charges in order to...

A man climbs into Ferdinand Sponer’s cab, gives the name of a hotel, and before he reaches it has been murdered: shot through the throat. And though Sponer has so far committed no crime, he is drawn into the late Jack Mortimer’s life, and might not be able to escape its tangles and intrigues before it is too late... Twice...

A dreamlike, chimerical masterpiece from a lost pre-war Europe—critically acclaimed and rightly revered. 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 bizarrely peaceful land where festivities are in full...

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...