When history meets fantastic: By night under the stone bridge from Leo Perutz

Abstract

Leo Perutz's novel By night under the stone bridge is situated in an intermediate area between history and fantastic. It is thus not easy to clearly classify this novel into a literary genre, and this characteristic also caused Perutz some problems when it was first published: for example, he could not publish this novel in his preferred publishing house in Vienna, but it appeared in one that had financial problems soon after which is why the novel became known only insidiously. As Perutz completed the novel after the Second World War, his publisher saw the subject as too Jewish, as they found that society was not interested in these topics after the horrors of the war. Perutz defended himself and saw his novel as a purely historical one. Both views have legal validity and both Jewishness and history are main components of the novel. However, the question arises as to how these themes were processed and to what extent they are mutually dependent.