Half pulled (by his beautiful, high-minded, muddled cousin Diotima), half-pushed (by his stern old father the Judge), Ulrich finds himself appointed secretary general of this comically doomed enterprise.

It is 1913 & from palace to salon all interlocking circles of court, aristocracy & high-bourgeoisie are gripped by a mission as high-flown as it is vague: to find a nationally appropriate way to celebrate the approaching 70th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef.

Unable to deceive himself that the jumble of attributes & values & behaviors that his world has bestowed upon him amounts to anything so innate as his 'character' / 'ego,' he is effectively a man 'w/o qualities,' a brilliant detached observer of the racing society spinning around him. Although he is eager for influence & worldly success, his self-awareness sets him apart from those around him. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ulrich: youngish, rich, an ex-soldier, a seducer, a scientist: 'the man w/o qualities'. Dazzlingly written, ferocious, suffused w/ high, ironic intelligence, it uses Viennese high society on the eve of World War I to chronicle the decay & collapse of the Old World & w/ utter prescience to explore all that would follow in our Age of Anxiety. * ABOUT THE WORK: This long-awaited translation, the first in English to provide the complete text, gives to its readers the greatest masterpiece in all 20th-century German literature, w/ Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past' & Joyce's 'Ulysses' this is one of the three literary masterworks of modernism. April 30,1995) First printing: NEW, PRISTINE, UNTOUCHED: Two-Volume hardcover set in EXCELLENT slipcase, NEW mylar-protected jackets w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, IMMACULATE smooth-cut text-block exteriors, NEW covers w/ black-linen wrapping spines & extending 1.25' onto front & back panels covered in black paper & w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, IMPECCABLE cream-white end-papers, NEW sewn bindings w/ tight signatures, PRISTINE interiors superbly printed in Caledonia on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * Volume I: 5.62' x 8.62' x 1.75', 0.92 kg, pp. METACLASSIC: SUPERB: RARE First edition (Orig.

The man without qualities