Zimmel´ [Simmel], Iohannes Mario [Johannes Mario] (1924 - 2009) Galust´ian, O., Dr., Dr., Major general [Preface] Drozdetskii, Igor´ Iakovlevich, translator.	V labirinte sekretnykh sluzhb. (Ostrosiuzhetnyi detektiv. Vypusk sed´moi.), M., 'Femida' 1991., 400 p. Publisher´s backram, VERY GOOD., FIRST RUSSIAN EDITION.	€27,50

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Johannes Mario Simmel was an Austrian writer. He was born in Vienna of non-Jewish mother and Jewish father, and grew up in Austria and England. Father Walter Simmel, a German Jew, was obliged by the Nazis to work as a chemist on the VI V2 rockets but he sabotaged their batteries. Mother Lisa was a reader at Wien-Film. Simmel was trained as a chemical engineer and worked in research from 1943 to the end of World War II. After the end of the war, he worked as a translator for the American military government and published reviews and stories in the Vienna Welt am Abend. Starting in 1950, he worked as a reporter for the Munich illustrated Quick in Europe and America. Many of his novels were successfully filmed in the 1960s and 1970s but only one film, 'Agent ponevole' (Es muß nicht immer Kaviar sein), was shown in the USSR in 1970s in two versions. He won numerous prizes, including the Award of Excellence of the Society of Writers of the UN. Important issues in his novels are a fervent pacifism as well as the relativity of good and bad. Several novels are said to have a true background, possibly autobiographic. In his afterward major general of military Justice O. Galustian praises Simmel´s artistic talent but makes a mistake, when claiming that all Simmel´s books were banned in the USSR before perestroika. Simmel´s 'liudi- ne ostrova' (1981) was published in a small run by Liesma Publishers in Riga. Simmel becomes one of the most popular author´s in Russia of 1990s. His books in mid 1990s regularly topped bestseller lists before Nobel laureates such as Guenter Grass and Heinrich Boell. The book was translated by a prominent Soviet Germanist Igor Drozdetsky who had strong ties with the DDR establishment in 1980s. 130 000 copies were printed and sold within one month or so. Out-of-print.