Author Guide · Modernist Fiction
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When Robert Musil died in Geneva on 15 April 1942, aged 61, the novel he had worked on for two decades was still unfinished, and his books were banned in Germany and Austria. Trained as a mechanical engineer, with a doctorate on the physicist Ernst Mach, he had published two volumes of The Man Without Qualities in 1930 and 1933; his widow Martha brought out a third, 462 pages from his papers, in Lausanne in 1943. Complete in English, the novel runs to 1,774 pages. His first book, about cruelty at a military boarding school, had caused a scandal in 1906. This guide covers his 7 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 1906–1937 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Robert Musil’s best-known books are The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, 1930–1943), The Confusions of Young Törless (Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß, 1906) and the novellas in Five Women. Start with Törless, a short novel. Below are all 7 key books with their German titles, first-edition years and English translators.
Where to Start with Robert Musil
If you want a short way in
→ The Confusions of Young Törless (1906) — his first novel, in Shaun Whiteside’s 2001 translation.
If you want his great novel
→ The Man Without Qualities (1930) — in Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike’s 1995 translation.
If you want his stories
→ Five Women (1924) — including Tonka.
If you want an essay
→ On Stupidity (1937) — a short lecture from 1937.
7 Robert Musil Books, in Order
The Confusions of Young Törless
His debut, published in 1906 by the Wiener Verlag and drawn on his own years at a military boarding school in Mährisch Weißkirchen (now Hranice). Three pupils, Reiting, Beineberg and Törless, catch their classmate Basini stealing and, instead of reporting him, abuse and blackmail him; Törless takes part while trying to understand the gap between his rational and irrational selves. Its sexual content caused a scandal. English translations include Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser (1955), Shaun Whiteside (Penguin Classics, 2001, introduced by J. M. Coetzee) and Mike Mitchell (Oxford, 2014); Volker Schlöndorff filmed it as Young Törless (1966).
Unions
Two stories published in 1911, the year Musil married Martha Marcovaldi. Kirkus called “The Perfecting of Love” the more representative of the two: a story of states of mind and feeling, whose women live in a dreamlike reverie of thinking, feeling and remembering. The other is “The Temptation of Quiet Veronica”. Peter Wortsman’s translation for Archipelago is titled Intimate Ties; both stories are also in Wilkins and Kaiser’s Five Women.
Die Schwärmer
His first play, published in 1921. It won the Kleist Prize in 1923. A second play, Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer, followed in 1924.
Five Women
Drei Frauen (1924) gathered three novellas. In “Tonka” a young man struggles with, and accepts, his responsibility for a simple woman whom the story pictures as “a snowflake falling all alone”. Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser’s translation, first published as Tonka and Other Stories (1965), adds the two stories of 1911; the 1966 American edition is called Five Women.
The Man Without Qualities
An unfinished novel set in Vienna in 1913, in the empire Musil calls Kakania, after “k. und k.”, imperial and royal. Ulrich, a mathematician, joins the “Collateral Campaign” to prepare the 1918 celebration of Franz Joseph’s seventy years on the throne, among the salon of his cousin Diotima, the Prussian businessman Arnheim and the murderer Moosbrugger; in Part III his sister Agathe enters the book. Volume 1 appeared in Berlin in 1930, volume 2 in 1933, and a third volume from his papers in 1943. Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser translated it in three volumes (1953–1960); Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike’s two-volume translation for Knopf (1995) received a PEN Translation Prize citation.
Posthumous Papers of a Living Author
A collection of short prose pieces published in 1936. In 1939 Germany and Austria banned it together with The Man Without Qualities. Peter Wortsman translated it for Archipelago Books.
On Stupidity
His lecture of 1937, the year before the annexation of Austria sent him into exile in Switzerland; it is translated as About Stupidity or On Stupidity.
In What Order to Read Robert Musil
Nothing in Musil continues from one book to the next except The Man Without Qualities, which is one book in several parts. Reading in publication order shows how the concerns of Törless, reason against feeling, carry through the novellas into the long novel.
The Man Without Qualities is long and unfinished: Parts I and II make a complete arc, Part III (“Into the Millennium (The Criminals)”) follows Ulrich and Agathe, and the end is drafts and notes. Joel Agee’s Agathe, or the Forgotten Sister (2020) is a separate translation of that last part.
A reading path
1. The Confusions of Young Törless (1906)
2. Five Women (1924)
3. On Stupidity (1937)
4. The Man Without Qualities (1930–1943)
Everything Else Robert Musil Published
Beyond the 7 key books: 2 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Plays and posthumous selections
2
2 books · 1924–2020
- 1924Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männerhis second play
- 2020Agathe, or the Forgotten Sisterthe last part of The Man Without Qualities, translated by Joel Agee (New York Review Books)
The years · 1880–1942
Quick facts about Robert Musil
- Known for
- Robert Musil is known for The Man Without Qualities, an unfinished novel about Vienna on the eve of the First World War, often ranked among the great European novels of the twentieth century.
- 1880
- Born in Klagenfurt, Carinthia
- 1906
- Young Törless
- 1923
- Kleist Prize for Die Schwärmer
- 1942
- Dies in Geneva, aged 61
- Born
- 6 November 1880, Klagenfurt, Austria-Hungary; his father Alfred was a professor of mechanical engineering in Brünn (Brno)
- Education
- Military boarding schools; mechanical engineering in Brno; a doctorate in Berlin under Carl Stumpf, with a thesis on Ernst Mach
- War
- Officer in the First World War; edited the Soldaten-Zeitung (1916–1917)
- Married
- Martha Marcovaldi, in 1911
- Honours
- Kleist Prize (1923), Art Prize of the City of Vienna (1924), Gerhart Hauptmann award (1929); nominated for the Nobel Prize
- Exile
- Switzerland from 1938, Zürich then Geneva; all his works banned in Germany and Austria by 1941
- Died
- 15 April 1942, Geneva
The red mark is 1930: the first volume of The Man Without Qualities.
How Robert Musil Writes: Reason and Feeling
Musil came to fiction from engineering, psychology and philosophy, and it shows. His doctorate was on Ernst Mach, and his hero Ulrich is a mathematician who looks at his society the way a scientist looks at an experiment. The novel moves less by plot than by essay-like reflection, and much of its comedy is satire: the Collateral Campaign spends hundreds of pages looking for a great idea to celebrate an emperor while the empire drifts towards war and collapse.
His subject from the start is the gap between reason and feeling. Törless tries to understand the distance between his rational and irrational selves and ends by telling his teachers that things just happen. The Man Without Qualities aims at a synthesis of scientific fact and the mystical, which Musil calls “the hovering life”. In Part III Ulrich and his sister Agathe feel a mystical bond and see themselves as “Siamese twins”; Musil scholarship discusses the state they reach for under the name der andere Zustand, “the other condition”. That is his link to writing on non-duality and unity: not a teaching, but a novelist’s attempt to describe a state in which the split between self and world, thinking and feeling, falls away.
Writers who came after him have claimed him: Milan Kundera said “No novelist is dearer to me”, and Thomas Bernhard said he was “addicted” to Musil. He met Franz Kafka in Prague in 1916, and is often read alongside Kafka and Thomas Mann as one of the novelists of the end of the Habsburg and Wilhelmine world.
Frequently asked questions about Robert Musil’s books
How many books has Robert Musil written?
Eight titles appeared in his lifetime: the 7 key books on this page and a second play, Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer (1924). The Man Without Qualities came out in two volumes (1930 and 1933), and his widow published a third volume from his papers in 1943.
What are Robert Musil’s books in order?
The Confusions of Young Törless (1906), Unions (1911), Die Schwärmer (1921), Five Women (Drei Frauen, 1924), The Man Without Qualities (1930, 1933 and 1943), Posthumous Papers of a Living Author (1936) and On Stupidity (1937).
Where should I start with Robert Musil?
With The Confusions of Young Törless (1906), a short novel, in Shaun Whiteside’s translation for Penguin Classics (2001) or Mike Mitchell’s for Oxford (2014). Then try the novellas in Five Women before the long novel.
What is Robert Musil’s most famous book?
The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), the unfinished novel about Ulrich, a mathematician in Vienna in 1913. Robert McCrum called it “one of Europe’s unquestioned 20th-century masterpieces”.
Which translation of The Man Without Qualities should I read?
The current standard English version is Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike’s, published by Knopf in two volumes in 1995, which includes material from Musil’s papers. The earlier translation by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser appeared in three volumes between 1953 and 1960.
Did Robert Musil finish The Man Without Qualities?
No. He published two volumes in 1930 and 1933 and was still working on it when he died in Geneva in 1942. In 1943 his widow Martha published a further 462 pages from his papers, including 20 chapters he had withdrawn from the printer, and the novel ends in drafts and notes.
Is Young Törless based on Musil’s life?
It draws on his years at a military boarding school in Mährisch Weißkirchen (now Hranice in the Czech Republic), but Musil later denied that the novel was about his own youth and said he wrote it “because of boredom”.
Has Musil’s work been filmed?
Yes. Volker Schlöndorff adapted Törless as Young Törless (1966). Nicolas Mahler made a comic-book version of The Man Without Qualities in 2013.
Why did Robert Musil go into exile?
After Austria was annexed in 1938, he and his wife Martha, who was Jewish by birth, left for Switzerland, first Zürich and from 1939 Geneva. Germany and Austria banned The Man Without Qualities and Posthumous Papers of a Living Author in 1939 and all his works in 1941. He died in Geneva on 15 April 1942.
Did Robert Musil win any prizes?
The Kleist Prize in 1923 for his play Die Schwärmer, the Art Prize of the City of Vienna in 1924 and the Gerhart Hauptmann award in 1929. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature but did not win it.
Footnotes
- Robert Musil — Wikipedia
- The Man Without Qualities — Wikipedia
- The Confusions of Young Törless — Wikipedia
- Five Women — Kirkus Reviews, 1966
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Wenn es Wirklichkeitssinn gibt, muß es auch Möglichkeitssinn geben. (If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility.)”
— Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930), title of chapter 4
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