PERUTZ, Leo

(1882-1957)

   Austrian novelist and playwright who moved to Israel in 1938 after the Anschluss. Most of his novels are baroque phantasmagorias, like Zwischen Neun und Neun (1918; trans Lily Lore as From Nine to Nine 1926US), an elaborately grotesque afterlife fantasy, Der Marques de Bolibar (1920; trans Graham Rawson as The Marquis de Bolibar 1926 UK), in which the Wandering Jew and the spirit of the eponymous marquis defeat a German regiment fighting for Napoleon, and Die Geburt des Antichrist ("The Birth of the Antichrist") (1921). Of more direct sf interest are Der Meister des juengsten Tages (1923; trans Hedwig Singer as The Master of the Day of Judgment 1929 UK), in which it is suggested that an ancient hallucinogen,when breathed by men of ambition, will so terrifyingly expose their true nature that they will commit suicide, and Sanct Petri-Schnee (1933; trans E.B.G. Stamper and F.M. Hodson as The Virgin's Brand 1934 UK; trans EricMosbacher as Saint Peter's Snow 1990 UK), which similarly depends upon a sense that human civilization is a fragile contrivance. The eponymous wheat fungus at the centre of this tale has been, from time immemorial, responsible for spreading a virus which induces faith in humans. In 1932, after long dormancy, the virus has been deliberately reinjected into European wheat strains in order to revitalize Christianity, but the deityinvoked turns out to be not God but Moloch. So forthright a fable for the times could not go unchallenged, and the Nazis banned the book as soon as they came to power.

   JC

   See also: AUSTRIA; GODS AND DEMONS.