Extravagant, sensual, mystical, and autobiographical, these stories by a modernist master are, as Frank Kermode notes in his preface, “elaborate attempts to use fiction for its true purposes, the discovery and regeneration of the human world.” Robert Musil, author of The Man Without Qualities, is a modernist writer of extremely profound literary influence and significance and these stories are an ideal entry into his world.
In his descriptions of love affairs and especially in the portraits of women in love, Musil is truly original; in managing scenes of physical love, he has not been approached by any writer of the last fifty years.
—V.S. Pritchett