STAR OF THE UNBORN

New York: The Viking Press, 1946. First printing. Very good plus in good plus jacket.. Scarce first US edition of Werfel's work of H.G. Wellsian science fiction updated by "Einstein and Catholicism" (Kahn) - in the rare dust jacket. Werfel's narrator first dies, then makes haste to California-Lemuria some hundred thousand years later. Inventive and unpredictable, concerned with time and timelessness, etiquette and mysticism, astral flight and angelology, committee meetings of talking dogs and the mass exodus of domestic cats from the hearths of humanity to somewhere out of the world. Werfel's ambitious and lengthy last work, it was written in German during his last years in California, then first published (posthumously) in Sweden as STERN DER UNGEBORENEN in 1946. 8.25'' x 5.5''. Original grey-blue cloth stamped in red and gilt. Red topstain. In original unclipped ($3.00) blue printed dust jacket designed by Robert Hallock. 645, [1] pages. Previous owner's name in pen to front free endpaper. Minor bumping to boards, very faint spotting to top edge of text block. Some chipping to jacket edges with additional closed tears to spine ends, small tape repair to jacket verso.