No Man’s Land

Alexander Jessiersky of Count Luna, published in 1955 and written by Viennese poet and novelist Alexander Lernet-Holenia, certainly belongs to this company of lost men. Living in Austria under Nazi occupation, the paranoid merchant chases a phantom through a novel of murderous blunders before absconding to Rome, where he enters the catacombs of St. Praetextatus. He is never again seen among the living.