Volume two of Peter Weiss’s three-volume novel The Aesthetics of Resistance, published in 1978, begins with the narrator in Paris after leaving the Spanish Civil War front lines. He then goes to Stockholm, where he is employed in a factory, joins the Communist Party, and meets Bertolt Brecht. The book is filled with real-life characters and reflects on the relationship between political resistance and art, which is the central theme of Weiss’s novel. Weiss believes that the significance of life lies in resisting oppression and that art offers new ways of political action and social understanding.
This historical novel covers the time frame from the late 1930s to World War II and depicts the struggle against fascism and the growth and decline of working-class political organizations in Europe.
