The Confusions of Young Torless »

"Musil belongs in the company of Joyce, Proust, and Kafka." (The New Republic)

Like his contemporary and rival Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil boldly explored the dark, irrational undercurrents of humanity. The Confusions of Young T rless, published in 1906 while he was a student, uncovers the bullying, snobbery, and vicious homoerotic violence at an elite boys academy. Unsparingly honest in its depiction of the author's tangled feelings about his mother, other women, and male bonding, it also vividly illustrates the crisis of a whole society, where the breakdown of traditional values and the cult of pitiless masculine strength were soon to lead to the cataclysm of the First World War and the rise of fascism. A century later, Musil's first novel still retains its shocking, prophetic power.

Author Biography: Robert Musil (1880-1942) was born in Austria and served in the Austrian army during World War I, after which he worked as a civil servant as well as a writer and journalist. He is best known for his monumental unfinished novel, The Man Without Qualities.