The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume I: A Novel (Volume 1)

The Aesthetics of Resistance is a masterly translation of one of the towering works of twentieth-century German literature, making it available to English-speaking readers for the first time.

This historical novel spans the period from the late 1930s to World War II and dramatizes antifascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe.

The narrator and his peers, sixteen- and seventeen-year-old working-class students living in Berlin in 1937, seek ways to express their hatred for the Nazi regime through art and political resistance.

Weiss suggests that meaning lies in embracing resistance, no matter how intense the oppression, and that we must look to art for new models of political action and social understanding.

The novel includes extended meditations on paintings, sculpture, and literature, moving from the Berlin underground to the front lines of the Spanish Civil War and other parts of Europe.

With characters based on historical figures, this essential resource for understanding twentieth-century German history is one of the truly great works of postwar German literature.