Die Schlafwandler

The Sleepwalkers

Author

Hermann Broch

Language

German

Year

1931

Country

Austria

Genre

Novel

modern novelspsychological fictionstream-of-consciousness

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The Sleepwalkers is a 1930s novel in three parts, by the Austrian novelist and essayist Hermann Broch. Opening in 1888, the first part is built around a young Prussian army officer; the second in 1903 around a Luxembourger bookkeeper; and the third in 1918 around an Alsatian wine dealer. Each is in a sense a sleepwalker, living between vanishing and emerging ethical systems just as the somnambulist exists in a state between sleeping and waking. Together they present a panorama of German society and its progressive deterioration of values that culminated in defeat and collapse at the end of World War I.