HERMANN BROCH (1886-1951) was an Austrian writer who achieved international recognition for his multidimensional novels in which he used innovative literary techniques to present a wide range of human experience.  He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950.

His first major work was the trilogy THE SLEEPWALKERS (1931-1932), which traces the disintegration of European society between 1888 and 1918, depicting the triumph of the realist over the romanticist and the anarchist.  Paralleling the historical process, the novel moves from a subtle parody of 19th-century realism through expressionism to a juxtaposition of many different forms, including poetry, drama, narrative, and essay.  The same preoccupation with the underlying incoherence -- and, finally, impossibility -- of life within a culture whose values are in decay informed his next book, THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY (1933).

Broch's masterpiece, THE DEATH OF VIRGIL (1945), is widely regarded as one of the great works of 20th-century modernism; its stream of consciousness and complex literary allusions were influenced by the style of James Joyce.  This extensive, difficult novel interweaves reality, hallucination, poetry and prose, and depicts the last hours of the Roman poet Virgil's life; his decision -- frustrated by the Roman emperor Augustus -- to burn his Aeneid; and his final reconciliation with his destiny.  Part historical novel and part prose poem, the book is an intensely musical and immensely evocative meditation on the relation between life and death, the ancient and the modern.

Murder, lust, shame, hypocrisy, and suicide are at the center of THE GUILTLESS (1950), Broch's postwar novel about the disintegration of European society in the decades preceding the Second World War.  His analysis of the thought and career of HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL (1974) attempts to define and analyze the major intellectual issues of the European fin de siècle, revealing Broch as a serious historian who believes that true historical understanding requires the faculties of both poet and philosopher.


The following books are in ePUB or PDF format as indicated:


== FICTION ==

* Death of Virgil, The (Vintage, 1995).  Translated by Jean Starr Untermeyer. -- ePUB

* Guiltless, The (Marlboro/Northwestern, 2000).  Translated by Ralph Manheim. -- PDF

* Sleepwalkers, The (Vintage, 1996).  Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. -- ePUB

* Unknown Quantity, The (Marlboro, 1988).  Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. -- PDF


== NON-FICTION ==

* Hugo von Hofmannsthal and His Time: The European Imagination, 1860-1920 (Chicago, 1984).  Translated by Michael P. Steinberg. -- PDF

* Lost Son: Hermann Broch's Letters to His Son, 1925-1928 (Counterpoint, 2012).  Translated by John Hargraves. -- ePUB

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