Short stories by a modernist master, the author of The Man Without Qualities. Extravagant, sensual, mystical, and autobiographical, these stories by Robert Musil are, as Frank Kermode has written, "elaborate attempts to use fiction for its true purposes, the discovery and regeneration of the human world." V. S. Pritchett wrote, "In his descriptions of love affairs and especially in the portraits of women in love, Musil is truly original; in managing scenes of physical love, he has not been approached by any writer of the last fifty years." Musil continues to be an author of extremely profound literary influence and significance and these stories, translated from the German, are an ideal entry into his world.