The Guiltless - Softcover

Broch, Hermann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810160781 ISBN 13: 9780810160781

Publisher: Marlboro Press, 2000

Synopsis

Murder, lust, shame, hypocrisy, and suicide are at the center of The Guiltless, Hermann Broch's postwar novel about the disintegration of European society in the decades preceding the Second World War. Broch's characters--apathetic, cruel, or indolent--are trapped in their indifference, prisoners of a "wakeful somnolence." They may mention the "imbecile Hitler," yet they prefer sex or a nap to any social action. Broch thought such ethical perversity and political apathy paved the way for Nazism and hoped that by revealing Germany's underlying guilt he could purge indifference from his own and future generations. In The Guiltless, Broch captures how ennui--a very human failing--evolves into something dehumanizing and dangerous.

About this title

About the Author:

Hermann Broch (1886-1951) had careers as a mathematician, engineer, and director of a Viennese textile firm before publishing his first work, the trilogy Sleepwalkers, in 1930-32. In 1935 he spent 5 months in a Nazi prison; in 1940 he emigrated to the U.S.

Ralph Manheim has translated Danilo Kiš's Hourglass and Günter Grass's Tin Drum and has edited translated novels and plays by Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Hesse, and Erich Maria Remarque.

Language Notes:

Text: English, German (translation)

About this edition

• Publisher: Marlboro Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0810160781
• ISBN 13: 9780810160781
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 292