Robert Musil

Robert Musil was an Austrian writer born on 6 November 1880 in St. Ruprecht, in what was then the Habsburg Empire. He trained as an engineer and studied philosophy and psychology, and this mix of science and thought shaped all his fiction. His first novel, Young Törless, appeared in 1906 and made his name. He served as an officer in the First World War, then worked as a writer and critic in Vienna and Berlin, often in financial difficulty. His great project was the unfinished novel The Man Without Qualities, on which he worked for most of his later life. It paints the last years of the old Austrian monarchy with irony, intelligence and a restless curiosity about how people think and feel. After the Nazi takeover of Austria he went into exile in Switzerland, where he died on 15 April 1942. His work was only widely read after his death, and he is now counted among the major European novelists of the twentieth century.