With an introduction by Jonathan Lethem It is 1913, and Viennese high society is determined to find an appropriate way of celebrating the seventieth jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef. But as the aristocracy tries to salvage something illustrious out of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the ordinary Viennese world is beginning to show signs of more serious rebellion. Caught in the middle of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: youngish, rich, an ex-soldier, seducer and scientist. Unable to deceive himself that the jumble of attributes and values that his world has bestowed on him amounts to anything so innate as a 'character', he is effectively a man 'without qualities', a brilliant, detached observer of the spinning, racing society around him. Part satire, part visionary epic, part intellectual tour de force, The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil is a work of immeasurable importance.

"We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little precision in matters of the soul."--Robert Musil Best known as author of the novel The Man without Qualities, Robert Musil wrote these essays in Vienna and Berlin between 1911 and 1937. Offering a perspective on modern society and intellectual life, they are concerned with the crisis of modern culture as it manifests itself in science and mathematics, capitalism and nationalism, the changing roles of women and writers, and more. Writing to find his way in a world where moral systems everywhere were seemingly in decay, Musil strives to reconcile the ongoing conflict between functional relativism and the passionate search for ethical values. Robert Musil was born in 1880 and died in 1942. His first novel, Young Toerless, is available in English. A new two-volume translation by Burton Pike and Sophie Wilkins of The Man without Qualities is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf. "Now we have these thirty-one invaluable and entertaining pieces, from an article on 'The Obscene and Pathological in Art' to the equally provocative talk 'On Stupidity,' which, with a new translation of The Man without Qualities forthcoming ...amount to a literary event for the reader of English comparable to Constance Garnett's massive translation of Chekhov's stories."--Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune

"Musil belongs in the company of Joyce, Proust, Kafka, and Svevo. . . . (This translation) is a literay and intellectual event of singular importance."--New Republic.

Der Band setzt sich mit einem fur Planung und Politik sowie raumliche Sozialforschung wichtigen, jedoch wenig beleuchteten Thema auseinander - mit dem Thema der Grenze. Dabei ist der Band auf unterschiedlichen Diskursebenen angesiedelt: einerseits auf einer theoretisch-konzeptionellen Ebene, die sich mit dem Thema der Grenzziehung und Grenzuberschreitung auseinandersetzt. Andererseits wird die Bedeutung von Grenzen fur die Planungs- und Handlungspraxis von Akteuren anhand konkreter Beispiele ausgelotet. Das Ziel des Bandes ist eine Reflexion aktueller und tagespolitischer Fragestellungen zum Thema Grenze im raumlichen, wie auch sozialen Kontext. Neben einem Beitrag zur geographischen Theoriebildung des Phanomens Grenze soll auch dessen Rolle als alltaglicher Handlungsrahmen, als Barriere bzw. als durchlassiger Kontext thematisiert werden. Der Inhalt* Theoretische und konzeptionelle Zugange zu Grenzen* Grenzen und Planungspraxis* Grenzen und Handlungspraxis Die Zielgruppen* Studierende, Wissenschaftler und Interessierte aus den Bereichen Geographie, Soziologie, Geschichte, Politikwissenschaft und Raumplanung* Regionalmanager, Stadt- und Regionalplaner Die HerausgeberProf. Dr. Martin Heintel lehrt am Institut fur Geographie und Regionalforschung an der Universitat Wien.Dr. Robert Musil ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut fur Stadt- und Regionalforschung (OEAW).Prof. Dr. Norbert Weixlbaumer lehrt am Institut fur Geographie und Regionalforschung an der Universitat Wien.

The stories here collected under the title Five Women combine two different volumes. All together, these stories, each of which (as the reader will guess) has a woman at the apparent centre of its gaze, has the feel of a series study, or of a natural history, though one performed in a strange and not entirely rational laboratory, or field. The intensity in these stories derives in part from looking at humans under the very ordinary extremities of love and desire. Neither love, nor femininity, is the subject matter so much as it is the medium. Translated by Eithne Wilkins & Ernst Kaiser

The Confusions of Young Torless is a taut, powerful depiction of teenage masculinity in this short novel set in an Austrian military academy. An unpopular boy is gradually bullied and humiliated by a coterie of better-off classmates until the almost unbearable conclusion. This was the work which made Musil's name and is his most popular work before his unfinished masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities.