De La conquista del mundo a Los herederos: el cambio del título de una novela de Oskar Maria Graf

Abstract

Oskar Maria Graf first published his "futuristic novel" in 1949 under the title The Conquest of the World (Kurt Desch-Verlag, Munich). However, for the new 1959 edition with Nest- Verlag, Frankfurt, he completely altered the title to The Heirs of Downfall. Graf's correspondence with editors and friends reveals hardly any cues for the reasons underlying this change, with which he tried to re-launch this great epic, which was, nevertheless, considered a failure by readers and critics. We shall analyse both editions in order to find out whether other changes were made apart from the title. It is also our aim to review the author's external circumstances in American exile, as well as his psychological development during that decade, in order to clarify whether they might have caused such a radical title switch.