The Confusions of Young Torless (riverrun editions)

One of the great short novels of the early twentieth century. It is a novel of youth; a novel of growing up; and it casts an unflinching look at the world.

The Confusions of Young Torless is a taut, powerful depiction of teenage masculinity in this short novel set in an Austrian military academy. An unpopular boy is gradually bullied and humiliated by a coterie of better-off classmates until the almost unbearable conclusion. This was the work which made Musil's name and is his most popular work before his unfinished masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities.