Man Without Qualities: Vol. 1: A Sort of Introduction/The Like of it Now Happens (I); Vol. 2: The Like of it Now Happens (II); Vol. 3: Into the Millennium (The Criminals) The Man Without Qualities (1930–42; German: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) is an unfinished novel in three books by the Austrian writer Robert Musil. The novel is a "story of ideas", which takes place in the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's last days, and the plot often veers into allegorical dissections of a wide range of human themes and feelings. It has a particular concern with the values of truth and opinion and how society organises ideas, though the book is over a thousand pages long and no one theme dominates.
The Critical Response to Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities (Literary Criticism in Perspective) Camden House