A haunting novel of love, fate and war from the Austrian master and acclaimed author of Baron Bagge and Count Luna

‘He’d had the feeling that he was expected there, on that day. But by whom?’

Vienna, 1939. Lieutenant Wallmoden is preparing to take part in a mysterious ‘military exercise’ when he meets the austerely beautiful Baroness Pistohlkors and her elusive circle of acquaintances. He promises to see her again – but then discovers his company has been mobilised for war. Marching across Europe, stumbling across the border between the living and the dead, one constant remains: he must keep his tryst with the Baroness, in this world or the next.

Banned by the Nazis and almost lost, Mars in Aries is an erotically charged ghost story, a shocking account of the invasion of Poland, and a mesmeric exploration of time and fate.