The Aerodrome

First published in 1941, The Aerodrome is one of the few works of fiction in the twentieth century to understand the dangerous yet glamorous appeal of fascism and the less than satisfactory answer of traditional democracy - and to transmute their deadly opposition into terms of enduring art. Rex Warner brilliantly invents, on one side, a thoroughly degenerate Village representing fallen man, and on the other side a great Aerodrome dedicated to ruthless efficiency. The ideological struggle between the idealistic Air Vice-Marshal and the hero-narrator from the Village is portrayed with poetry, narrative speed, and great simplicity of language. It is a great symbolic novel of our time, as pertinent today as when it was written.