Theodor Fontane, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, and Gunther Grass are among the writers examined in this comprehensive introduction to the development of the German novel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Including a chronology and guide to further reading, the Companion conveys the vitality and complexity of the modern German novel, and the debates surrounding it.

Theodor Fontane, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, and Gunther Grass are among the writers examined in this comprehensive introduction to the development of the German novel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Including a chronology and guide to further reading, the Companion conveys the vitality and complexity of the modern German novel, and the debates surrounding it.

Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities is perhaps the most important novel in German written in the twentieth century - certainly it is among the most brilliant, puzzling and profound. This, the first comprehensive study of the work to appear in English, guides the reader towards Musil's central concerns. It examines how Musil laboured through draft after draft to produce material that would pass his own strict literary 'quality control' and traces major themes through different layers of narrative with the aid of close textual analysis. It details how Musil subjects leading figures of...

A panel of authors, critics, and academics convened by the Literaturhaus in Munich in 1999 voted Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities the most important German novel of the 20th century. Their collective judgment rests on strong foundations: on the work's encyclopedic compass, embracing intellectual, social, political, and cultural concerns embodied in themes of striking originality; on its probing of key issues of Austrian and German life from the first four decades of the twentieth century; on the brilliance of its language, unsurpassed by any other 20th-century author writing in...