Portal:Literature/Biography archive/2007, Week 45

Robert Musil (November 6, 1880, Klagenfurt, Austria – April 15, 1942, Geneva, Switzerland) was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities (in German, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels. The novel deals with the moral and intellectual decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the eyes of the book's protagonist Ulrich, an ex-mathematician who has failed to engage with the world around him in a manner that would allow him to possess 'qualities'. It is set in Vienna on the eve of World War I. Musil, himself, served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army at the front between 1914 - 1918.