Leo Perutz
Encyclopedia
Leopold Perutz was an Austria
n novelist and mathematician
. He was born in Prague
and was thus a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He lived in Vienna
until the Nazi
Anschluss
in 1938, when he emigrated to Palestine.
According to the biographical note on the Arcade Publishing
editions of the English translations of his novels, Leo was a mathematician who formulated an algebraic
equation
which is named after him; he worked as a statistician
for an insurance
company. He was related to the biologist
Max Perutz
.
During the 1950s he returned occasionally to Austria
, spending the summer and autumn months in the market town of St. Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut
resort region and in Vienna
. He died in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl
in 1957. He wrote his first novel, The Third Bullet, in 1915 while recovering from a wound sustained in the First World War. In all Perutz wrote eleven novels, which gained the admiration of Jorge Luis Borges
, Italo Calvino
, Ian Fleming
, Karl Edward Wagner
and Graham Greene
. Wagner cited Perutz' novel The Master of the Day of Judgement as one of the thirteen best non-supernatural horror novels.
twist. Austrian fellow novelist Friedrich Torberg
once characterized Perutz' literary style as the possible result of a little infidelity of Franz Kafka
and Agatha Christie
. By Night Under the Stone Bridge is an episodic
work whose separate stories are bound together by the illicit love shared, in their dreams, by a Jewish woman and the Emperor Rudolf II
. In the posthumously-published Leonardo's Judas, da Vinci
's quest for an appropriate face to give the betrayer in his Last Supper
is interwoven with the squabble between an usurer and the merchant to whom he owes money. The title of Saint Peter's Snow, which is set in what was then the present day (1932), refers to a drug which induces religious fervour; the Nazis, understandably, did not care for it. The Master of the Day of Judgement is a decidedly different mystery
story about the circumstances surrounding an actor's death in the early twentieth century, and Little Apple concerns a First World War soldier's obsessive quest for revenge.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n novelist and mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
. He was born in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
and was thus a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He lived in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
until the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
in 1938, when he emigrated to Palestine.
According to the biographical note on the Arcade Publishing
Arcade Publishing
Arcade Publishing is an independent trade publishing company that started in 1988 in New York, USA. They are publishers of American and world fiction and non-fiction...
editions of the English translations of his novels, Leo was a mathematician who formulated an algebraic
Algebraic
Algebraic may refer to any subject within the algebra branch of mathematics and related branches like algebraic geometry and algebraic topology.Algebraic may also refer to:...
equation
Equation
An equation is a mathematical statement that asserts the equality of two expressions. In modern notation, this is written by placing the expressions on either side of an equals sign , for examplex + 3 = 5\,asserts that x+3 is equal to 5...
which is named after him; he worked as a statistician
Statistician
A statistician is someone who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. The core of that work is to measure, interpret, and describe the world and human activity patterns within it...
for an insurance
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
company. He was related to the biologist
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
Max Perutz
Max Perutz
Max Ferdinand Perutz, OM, CH, CBE, FRS was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of hemoglobin and globular proteins...
.
During the 1950s he returned occasionally to Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, spending the summer and autumn months in the market town of St. Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut
Salzkammergut
The Salzkammergut is a resort area located in Austria. It stretches from City of Salzburg to the Dachstein mountain range, spanning the federal states of Upper Austria , Salzburg , and Styria . The main river of the region is the Traun, a tributary of the Danube...
resort region and in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. He died in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl
Bad Ischl
Bad Ischl is a spa town in Austria. It lies in the southern part of Upper Austria, at the Traun River in the centre of the Salzkammergut region. The town consists of the Katastralgemeinden Ahorn, Bad Ischl, Haiden, Jainzen, Kaltenbach, Lauffen, Lindau, Pfandl, Perneck, Reiterndorf and Rettenbach...
in 1957. He wrote his first novel, The Third Bullet, in 1915 while recovering from a wound sustained in the First World War. In all Perutz wrote eleven novels, which gained the admiration of Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
, Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
, Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, editor and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. His disillusionment with the medical profession can be seen in the stories "The Fourth Seal" and "Into...
and Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
. Wagner cited Perutz' novel The Master of the Day of Judgement as one of the thirteen best non-supernatural horror novels.
Overview
Perutz' novels are short and are usually historical novels combining fast-paced adventure with a metaphysicalMetaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
twist. Austrian fellow novelist Friedrich Torberg
Friedrich Torberg
Friedrich Torberg is the pen-name of Friedrich Kantor, an Austrian writer.- Biography :...
once characterized Perutz' literary style as the possible result of a little infidelity of Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
and Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
. By Night Under the Stone Bridge is an episodic
Episodic
Episodic can refer to* The nature of television series that are divided into short programs. See Episode* Episodic memory relates to the types of memory that result from specific incidents in a lifetime...
work whose separate stories are bound together by the illicit love shared, in their dreams, by a Jewish woman and the Emperor Rudolf II
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor
Rudolf II was Holy Roman Emperor , King of Hungary and Croatia , King of Bohemia and Archduke of Austria...
. In the posthumously-published Leonardo's Judas, da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
's quest for an appropriate face to give the betrayer in his Last Supper
The Last Supper (Leonardo)
The Last Supper is a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este...
is interwoven with the squabble between an usurer and the merchant to whom he owes money. The title of Saint Peter's Snow, which is set in what was then the present day (1932), refers to a drug which induces religious fervour; the Nazis, understandably, did not care for it. The Master of the Day of Judgement is a decidedly different mystery
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...
story about the circumstances surrounding an actor's death in the early twentieth century, and Little Apple concerns a First World War soldier's obsessive quest for revenge.
Novels by Perutz in English translation
(Dates of publication are for the original German-language editions)- From Nine to NineFrom Nine to NineFrom Nine to Nine or Between Nine and Nine is a novel by Leo Perutz first published in 1918. It is about a turbulent day in the life of an impoverished student in Imperial Vienna...
(1918) - The Marquis of Bolibar (1920)
- The Master of the Day of Judgement (1921)
- Turlupin (1924)
- Little Apple (1928)
- Saint Peter's Snow (1933)
- The Swedish Cavalier (1936)
- By Night under the Stone Bridge (1952)
- Leonardo's Judas (1959)
Read On
- Hans Harald Müller: Leo Perutz (biography, München: Verlag C. H. Beck, 19921992 in literatureThe year 1992 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Ben Aaronovitch - Transit*Julia Álvarez - How the García Girls Lost Their Accents*Paul Auster - Leviathan*Iain Banks - The Crow Road...
) - Neuhaus, Dietrich: Errinerung und Schrecken. DieEinheit von Geschichte, Phantastik und Mathematik im Werk Leo Perutz (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1984)
- Brigitte Forster, Hans Harald Müller (Hrsg.): Leo Perutz. Unruhige Träume - Abgründige Konstruktionen. Dimensionen des Werks, Stationen der Wirkung. (Wien: Sonderzahl, 2002) ISBN 3-85449-197-2.
- Ulrike Siebauer: Leo Perutz Ich kenne alles. Alles, nur nicht mich. (biography, GerlingenGerlingenGerlingen is a town in the district of Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated 9 km west of Stuttgart, and 15 km southwest of Ludwigsburg, Gerlingen is home to BOSCH appliances....
: Bleicher, 2000)