Selected Short Writings (German Library)

"The scope of the material collected in this book ranges from class conditions under the liberated forces of capitalism, through the phantasmagoria of bourgeois sexuality, to the bio-politics of a state that sought to regulate even the morality of its citizens. Three of the authors represented are of Jewish origin, deeply informed by experiences and degrees of marginality: the satirist and playwright Karl Kraus (1874-1936), and the epic novelists and essayists Hermann Broch (1886-1951) and Elias Canetti (1905-94). Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956), a contemporary of the three writers, cultivated a "small," courageous literature that overcame the stable relations between repression and revolt that constitutes the literature of the Weiner Moderne."--BOOK JACKET.