Prague remains my deepest experience. Its conflicts, its mystery, its rat-catchers beauty have ever provided my poetic efforts with new inspiration and meaning, Leppin once wrote. True to his word, this, his most acclaimed novel, is set in Prague, a city of darkened walls and strange decay a world of femmes fatales, Russian anarchists, dabblers in the occult and denizens of decadent salons which forms the backdrop of Severin's erotic adventures and fateful encounters. As Max Brod so aptly remarked:"Leppin was the truly chosen bard of the painfully disappearing old Prague, its infamous sidestreets and debauched nights ... he was at once a servant of the devil and adorer of the Madonna."About the Author:Paul Leppin was born in Prague on November 27, 1878, the second son of a failed clockmaker and a former teacher. Forced by the economic difficulties of his family to forgo a university education, he entered the civil service upon graduation from gymnasium, working as an accountant for the Postal Service until his release due to reasons of physical disability. Beginning with the appearance of his first novel, The Doors of Life, in 1901, his poetry, prose, and criticism appeared regularly in Prague and Germany over the next thirty years. Leppin was also one of the few German writers to have close contacts with the Czech literary community, translating Czech poetry and writing articles on Czech literature and art for German periodicals. As a leading figure of a young generation of Prague German writers, calling themselves "Jung-Prag" and centered around the two literary periodicals he edited, Frühling and Wir, Leppin sought to combat the conservatism and provincialism of the city¹s established culture. Although many German writers eventually left Prague, Leppin could not live elsewhere and remained in the city after the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, writing novels, plays (performed at the Neues