Fiction. Translated from the German by Cynthia Klima. Afterword by Dierk O. Hoffman. BLAUGAST is the story of ruin. A bored clerk, Klaudius Blaugast, pursues his desires down a path spiraling into complete degradation. Homeless and destitute, having lost everything to the evil prostitute Wanda, he seeks redemption in a Prague that has become alien to him. Flashbacks to incidents in his past, hallucinatory revelations of the meaning of events long forgotten, point to the seeds of his eventual downfall. Unpublished during Leppin's lifetime, BLAUGAST ranks with SEVERIN'S JOURNEY INTO THE DARK for its portrayal of eroticism in a city that has become sybaritic and uncaring. Written in the 1930s as the Nazis were coming to power in Germany, it is an indictment of the despotic and vulgar, an exploration of the sadistic tendencies found in most people, especially those who consider themselves "moral" and "respectable. "Leppin was the truly chosen bard of the painfully disappearing old Prague...a poet of eternal disillusionment, at once a servant of the Devil and an adorer of the Madonna"--Max Brod.

Paul Leppin (November 27, 1878 - April 10, 1945) was a 20th century Bohemian writer of German language, who was born and lived in Prague. Although he wrote in German, he was in close contact with Czech literature. He translated Czech books and wrote articles on Czech literature. He was also an editor of two literary periodicals, Fruhling and Wir.