“The Heart of an Adventurer” is the only book that, by the will of the author, exists in two independent editions. It was first published in 1929 in Berlin and bore the subtitle “Notes by day and night.” The second edition of The Heart, subtitled “Figures and Capriccios,” was prepared at the end of 1937, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. While working on it, Junger changed almost two-thirds of the original version of the book. In its complex and simple language, devoid of any political content and anticipating the symbolism of the short story “On the Marble Cliffs” (1939), that same “struggle for form”, under the sign of which all Jünger’s work with words stands, found its vivid embodiment. It is this language that distinguishes the prose of the mature Jünger, making him one of the most brilliant stylists in the history of German literature of the 20th century.

The cover design uses a photograph of Wehrmacht captain Ernst Jünger in the garrison of Blankenburg, Prussia in 1939 (in the original is a black and white photograph).

Ernst Junger. Das abenteuerliche Herz. Zweite Fassung. Figuren und Capriccios. 1937.Translation from German by Alexander Mikhailovsky

Ernst Junger. The heart of an adventurer. Publishing house "Ad Marginem". Moscow. 2004.