Robert Musil

Robert Musil (Klagenfurt, Austria, November 6, 1880 – April 15, 1942 in Geneva, Switzerland) was an Austrian writer, author of the unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities (in German, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), one of the most important modernist novels.

Trivia

Thomas Mann (1875), Hermann Hesse (1877), Robert Musil (1880), Franz Kafka (1883), Hermann Broch (1886) were of the same literary generation. Even James Joyce was born in the same period, in 1882, and died a year before Musil, both far from their native countries in Switzerland.

Related Topics:
Thomas Mann - 1875 - Hermann Hesse - 1877 - Robert Musil - 1880 - Franz Kafka - 1883 - Hermann Broch - 1886 - James Joyce - 1882 - Switzerland

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The Man Without Qualities only brought Musil mediocre commercial success. Though he was nominated for the Nobel Prize, he felt he did not receive the recognition he deserved. He sometimes expressed annoyance at the success of more famous colleagues like Thomas Mann, or Hermann Broch, who admired his work deeply and, moved by his material poverty, tried to shield him against quotidian worries and encouraged him to further his literary work, even though Musil was initially critical of Mann.

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