it was published in May 1918 by the Fischer Verlag. In its stringent refusal of a tragic tone, the book earned the praise of a young Bertolt Brecht. Wallenstein Although Döblin's 1920 epic about the Thirty Years' War was in general favorably received by critics, he was disappointed with the reception because he felt he had created in Wallenstein a peerless work; as a consequence, he wrote a scathing critique of critics which he published in 1921 under the title Der Epiker, sein Stoff und die Kritik (The Epic Poet, his Material, and Critique). The novel centers on the tension between Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor and his general, Albrecht von Wallenstein; Wallenstein represents a new type of warfare characterized by ruthless Realpolitik and capitalist expansion while Ferdinand becomes increasingly overwhelmed by the course of events and gradually retreats from politics altogether. Döblin's approach to narrating the war differed from prevailing historiography in that, rather than interpreting the Thirty Years' War primarily as a religious conflict, he portrays it critically as the absurd consequence of a combination of national-political, financial, and individual psychological factors. Döblin saw a strong similarity between the Thirty Years' War and the First World War, during which he wrote Wallenstein. The novel is counted among the most innovative and significant historical novels in the German literary tradition. Berge Meere und Giganten Döblin's 1924 science fiction novel recounts the course of human history from the 20th to the 27th century, portraying it as a catastrophic global struggle between technological mania, natural forces, and competing political visions. Berge Meere und Giganten (Mountains Seas and Giants) presciently invokes such topics as urbanization, the alienation from nature, ecological devastation, mechanization, the dehumanization of the modern world, as well as mass migration, globalization, totalitarianism, fanaticism, terrorism, state surveillance, genetic engineering, synthetic food, the breeding of humans, biochemical warfare, and others. Stylistically and structurally experimental, it was regarded as a difficult work when it first came out and has often polarized critics. Among others, Günter Grass has praised the novel's continued relevance and insight. As of early 2021, the first English translation of the novel, by Chris Godwin, is due to appear with Galileo Publishing. Manas This remarkable but almost totally neglected epic in free verse immediately preceded Döblin's best-known work Berlin Alexanderplatz. That both works were closely associated in Döblin's mind is shown by a remark in his Afterword to the