
The Man Without Qualities
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Narrated by:
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John Telfer
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By:
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Robert Musil
About this listen
In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
A classic of the 20th century, Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) is endlessly thought-provoking, insightful and stimulating. Part satire, part visionary epic, part intellectual tour de force, it is a work of immeasurable importance. In fact, The Man Without Qualities is one of the peaks of European modernist literature, along with Joyce’s Ulysses and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, though with its own distinct character.
First and foremost, it is a novel where the ‘plot’ largely provides the riverbank down which the river can flow—fortunate with a work that, despite its considerable length, is unfinished! This may explain why it is less known, less read and less championed than its more famous peers, but those who do take the trouble to dive in are astonished. For a start, though often dense in content, it is generally accessible and often a delight to read—furthermore, it is both engrossing and fun. It is not surprising that Musil (1880-1942) was contemporaneous with Freud, whose psychoanalytic ideas emerge in various ways throughout the novel. So do the shades of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others who provide a philosophical backdrop—this is a great novel of ideas.
There are curiosities also, such as the sex-murderer Moosbrugger, who casts a dark but fascinating shadow over Ulrich’s society. And there is a variety of women with whom Ulrich interacts. There are girlfriends of passing involvement, such as Leona and Bonadea; there is Clarisse, wife of a close friend, and Diotima, seemingly a pillar of Viennese society. And his sister Agathe. They all act as challenging foils in any number of ways to tempt and undermine Ulrich’s sense of who he is.
Musil began writing The Man Without Qualities in 1921 and was still writing and revising it at his death (in Switzerland) in 1942. It is divided into three parts, which were published by 1933 though an English translation of all three parts did not appear until 1961. This recording features the latest (and exemplary) translation by Sophie Wilkins. In addition, it contains 20 chapters, prolonging part III, which were discovered in the mass of papers decades after Musil’s death. He intended to include them, but ultimately held them back for minor revisions.
This remarkable book, available for the first time on audio, is superbly read by John Telfer, who reflects the ‘decaying fin de siècle’ world as the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the old order, slides into oblivion.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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- Memoirs of a European
- By: Stefan Zweig, Anthea Bell - translator
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars. Zweig's passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. It is an unusually humane account of Europe from the closing years of the 19th century through to World War II, seen through the eyes of one of the most famous writers of his era.
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Lucidity whilst Civilization reverts to barbarism
- By none on 06-25-17
By: Stefan Zweig, and others
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The Good Soldier Svejk
- By: Jaroslav Hasek
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 28 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The Good Soldier Švejk, written shortly after the First World War, is one of the great antiwar satires - and one of the funniest books of the 20th (or any) century. In creating his eponymous hero, Jaroslav Hašek produced an unforgettable character who charms and infuriates and bamboozles his way through the conflagration that tore through the heart of Europe, upending empires and changing social history. It is the closing period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassination at Sarajevo has just occurred and armies are on the march.
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This is real!
- By Lorenzo Coopman on 10-08-20
By: Jaroslav Hasek
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The Thomas Mann Collection: Magic Mountain, Buddenbrooks, and Death in Venice
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 70 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The Thomas Mann Collection includes unabridged recordings of Thomas Mann's 3 greatest works of fiction in one audiobook.
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Well worth your credit!
- By Sam Q on 01-15-23
By: Thomas Mann
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The Confusions of Young Master Törless
- By: Robert Musil
- Narrated by: Jamie Parker
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert Musil (1880-1942) is best known for his enduring masterpiece The Man Without Qualities, one of the great European works of the 20th century. It was with The Confusions of Young Master Törless first published in 1906, a challenging but very different work, that he signalled his extraordinary talent. As the nineteenth century draws to an end, young Torless is sent to a military boarding school for the sons of the nobility on the eastern outreaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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Very Philosophical
- By Anonymous User on 03-01-23
By: Robert Musil
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The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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Molloy
- By: Samuel Beckett
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett, Dermot Crowley
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Written initially in French, later translated by the author into English, Molloy is the first book in Dublin-born Samuel Beckett's trilogy. It was published shortly after WWII and marked a new, mature writing style, which was to dominate the remainder of his working life. Molloy is less a novel than a set of two monologues narrated by Molloy and his pursuer, Moran.
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Nauseating, boring, hilarious, and magnificent
- By Gene on 02-21-05
By: Samuel Beckett
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Swann's Way
- By: Marcel Proust
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Swann's Way is the first novel of Marcel Proust's seven-volume magnum opus In Search of Lost Time. After elaborate reminiscences about his childhood with relatives in rural Combray and in urban Paris, Proust's narrator recalls a story regarding Charles Swann, a major figure in his Combray childhood....
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Not the newer, far better translation
- By Samuel Murray on 05-02-11
By: Marcel Proust
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The Tin Drum
- A New Translation by Breon Mitchell
- By: Günter Grass
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 25 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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To mark the 50th anniversary of the original publication of this runaway best seller, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, along with Grass' publishers all over the world, offer a new translation of this classic novel. Breon Mitchell, acclaimed translator and scholar, has drawn from many sources. The result is a translation that is faithful to Grass' style and rhythm, restores omissions, and reflects more fully the complexity of the original work. After 50 years, The Tin Drum has, if anything, gained in power and relevance.
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It's a metaphor, right?
- By Barry on 08-11-12
By: Günter Grass
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The Anatomy of Melancholy
- By: Robert Burton
- Narrated by: Peter Wickham
- Length: 56 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1621, and hardly ever out of print since, it is a huge, varied, idiosyncratic, entertaining and learned survey of the experience of melancholy, seen from just about every possible angle that could be imagined. The Anatomy of Melancholy, presented here with all the original quotations in English, is, at last, available on audiobook in its entirety.
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Nam Et Doctis Hisce Erroribus Versatus Sum
- By Darwin8u on 05-26-20
By: Robert Burton
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The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
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A Magical Journey
- By Paul on 08-20-20
By: Thomas Mann
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Parallel Stories
- A Novel
- By: Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein - translator
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 58 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Three unusual men are at the heart of Parallel Stories: Hans von Wolkenstein, whose German mother is linked to secrets of fascist-Nazi collaboration during the 1940s; Ágost Lippay Lehr, whose influential father has served Hungary’s different political regimes for decades; and András Rott, who has his own dark record of mysterious activities abroad. The web of extended and interconnected dramas reaches from 1989 back to the spring of 1939, when Europe trembled on the edge of war.
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I wish I could return this
- By Rayos X on 05-19-12
By: Péter Nádas, and others
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Middle C
- By: William H. Gass
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Gass’ new novel moves from World War II Europe to a small town in postwar Ohio. In a series of variations, Gass gives us a mosaic of a life - futile, comic, anarchic - arranged in an array of vocabularies, altered rhythms, forms and tones, and broken pieces with music as both theme and structure, set in the key of middle C. It begins in Graz, Austria, 1938. Joseph Skizzen's father, pretending to be Jewish, leaves his country for England with his wife and two children to avoid any connection with the Nazis, who he foresees will soon take over his homeland....
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All the world was a stage. But not for all the wor
- By Darwin8u on 06-07-14
By: William H. Gass
What listeners say about The Man Without Qualities
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- Anonymous User
- 03-08-23
Great voice performance
The book is quite accessible in this form. The voice performance was great all the way through.
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- Jerome Gentes
- 12-10-22
A Masterpiece
One of the towering achievements of the modern novel. It remains unfinished. An abridged reading would give any listener a sense of the whole, but the whole is magnificently philosophical, post-romantic, modern, and urban. Not a single thing about it felt pastoral or lyric. As a view into the start of the horrors of the 20th century and beyond, unparalleled.
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7 people found this helpful
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- C L Haight
- 03-26-23
Beautiful!
Robert Musil's great unfinished masterwork is here wonderfully translated into English and extremely well read by John Telfer. Loaded with irony and shot-through with humor and essayistic erudition, this book is a pleasure to read and to listen to.
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2 people found this helpful
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- whosis
- 12-22-24
Hilarious. About nothing.
I read it before listening to it. Wish I'd read it years ago. Somehow the title never clicked. Virtually lacks plot and narrative. Skills developed in Austria coffee houses. Feel Musil could have kept going for ever. I think it is fun. And funny. Seinfeld very possibly could have developed the idea of "nothing happens" from old RM. Though it's long I began it again and listened once more immediately after completing it. Where are such conversationalists now?
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1 person found this helpful
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- Chris Johnson
- 02-19-24
An Extraordinary Literary Achievement
I read this book as a young man and found it full of beguiling stories and ideas. Now, listening to it as an elderly man, it still fascinates and inspires me.
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- Anna D. Scahill
- 09-07-24
Incredible performance
The book itself is its own taste, but the performance was incredible. This was assigned in my college philosophy class years ago, and I didn’t even try to read it. Even in this format it was daunting but rewarding.
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- Delano
- 06-23-22
An unmatched intellectual epic
One of the most important events ever in the world of audiobooks. In print this is two gigantic volumes of dense social commentary on the last days of the Austrian empire, and how many people are really going to get through that? But the audio simply takes you along on the journey, making it easy to glide through the less rewarding parts and spend time revisiting the chapters intriguing that you want to memorize every word. The reflections on the nature of modernity, relations between lovers, rationality and poetry, the human mind, and other profound questions mixed in with human stories and conversations really raise this above ordinary literature.
The narration is a good balance of the lively and engaging without being exaggerated or excessive. Very listenable.
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23 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 08-07-24
A writer WITH qualities
Robert Musil is not a name many people will know outside Austria and some other European countries. A mathematician who studied under Mach, Musil was an unusual mixture of scientist and artist and this, to me, shows in his masterpiece The Man Without Qualities.
I bought The Man Without Qualities many years ago and started it many times, but could never get past the first several chapters. Perhaps it was the daunting size of the story, or perhaps it was the nature of the story itself, with the existential angst of Nietzsche overwhelming and threatening to overflow out of the pages. In fact, I would get trapped after reading the first paragraph and spend days contemplating the depth of the ideas. This, it seems to me, is the great merit of this book-the emotive and compelling narrative that makes you think and feel about your thoughts and feelings. The character development is unusual in the sense that it’s like joining a conversation halfway through, learning some naughty secrets about someone, and then fluttering off to another conversation elsewhere. Morals and feelings are dissected more than discussed, giving you the feeling of witnessing a vivisection of civilization at the dawn of the 20th century and moments before the fall into barbarism. Musil is a master at directing the reader’s attention to the clash of the old and new, to ways of looking at things that might have been mundane up until that point. If you enjoy this, then you will enjoy the book.
And for the narrator, well….he is a genius! His reading style is perfect for the highbrow nature of the story and characters (politicians, upper class, military etc etc) and pulls off their voices with great success. He creates a wonderful atmosphere in his delivery that, as I mentioned above, makes you feel like a fly on the wall in one of the conversations.
This is a long listen and although I did find myself drifting off into reveries at times, and missing part of the narration, I kept a paper copy of the story handy or an Ebook version so I could highlight or bookmark areas I could go back to later and contemplate at leisure.
All in all, this book and performance will be one to both remember and revisit long after you finish it (note: the book itself was never finished so you end like a mountain climber on a precipice, trying to recover your balance, with the wind of the story at your back, and the possible endings in front of you)
Obviously everything this review has said is subjective and comes down to taste, so I leave it up to the good reader to decide.
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- Grant
- 12-26-23
Whole is less than sum of the parts
I can understand why this book shows up on lists of highly rated novels. There is much to admire. I can just as easily understand why it is little read or known. It is dauntingly long. The book has an overall cool tone — analytical, ironic, overly intellectualized. The book will drift into sidebars of philosophy, sociology, psychology and politics that bring any narrative flow to a halt. Lot and lots of talk about abstractions of all kinds. And a robust knowledge of Austrian and European history is often required to make some passages and events meaningful or interesting. If you found The Magic Mountain uncongenial for any of these reasons, MWQ is far more extreme in these respects.
Yet individual chapters can be masterfully written, with some occasional overwriting. But the sweep is so vast, the digressions so disruptive, that it never really gels to a whole. This was a work of great ambition, but a bit more focus would make it more accessible.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 05-20-23
A man without interest
To judge from the early chapters (I could suffer no more) of this very long (yet unfinished, apparently) book the titular man without qualities is also, sadly, without restraint. Verbose without mercy when expressing his unfailingly dull views about equally dull subjects, he is relentless.
A trifle of little interest expanded to gargantuan proportions, this book is surely one of 20th century literature's greatest marathons of tedium.
If you are inclined to tackle a great project in your reading (or audio book listening) then choose Proust. Don't waste your time and interest on a turgid relic that belongs under a thick dust cover.
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