Vampire (Ewers novel)

Vampire is a 1921 novel by the German writer Hanns Heinz Ewers.

Plot

The novel is set in the United States during World War I and follows a German propaganda operative, Frank Braun, who struggles with a mysterious ailment and spends time with his devoted half-Jewish mistress. It was the last of Ewers' three novels about Braun. It was in parts inspired by Ewers' personal experiences as a pro-German propagandist in the United States during the war.

Publication

published the book in 1921. An English translation was published in the United States in 1934 with several passages cut out. The American scholar Lisa Lampert-Weissig describes them as "passages depicting pedophilia, as well as Ewers' anti-American rhetoric, and his offensive racist language concerning people of color". Lampert-Weissig writes that the novel presents an example of the connection between "vampirism and early twentieth-century discourses of race", complicated by Ewers' combination of overt philo-Semitism and German nationalism.