The Guiltless

by Hermann Broch

Book Overview

Murder, lust, shame, hypocrisy, and suicide are at the center of The Guiltless, Hermann Broch's postwar novel about the disintegration of European society in the decades preceding the Second World War. Broch's characters--apathetic, cruel, or indolent--are trapped in their indifference, prisoners of a "wakeful somnolence." They may mention the "imbecile Hitler," yet they prefer sex or a nap to any social action. Broch thought such ethical...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810160781
• ISBN13: 9780810160781
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: Marlboro Press
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Laden with epiphany but...

If someone asked me to describe this book, I would probably hesitate, blink once or twice, stutter, shuffle my feet uncomfortably, and then tell said someone to return in 20 or 30 years after I've given this one another go. I give it five stars, but I'm not really sure why. It might be the epiphany given to us on just about every page. Seriously, folks, Broch was beyond current imaginings with some of his prosody. I could sum up the skeletal plot here, but I won't. I can only advise one to read this at least once and perhaps one day on a far flung colony of Earth we can come together and discuss this work as it should be discussed.

A study on indifference

This novel was born out of several previous short novellas, which Broch weaved together, adding new chapters and orderered to tell one multilayered story, a rich, complex and deep one. It is the story of A., a Dutch financier who lives in Germany. The three parts of the book correspond to the years 1913, 1923 and 1933. Besides portraying the pre-Hitlerian Germany, it is a metaphysical novel, in the strictest sense of the concept. The fundamental subject is indifference as an attitude towards life. "A" is indifferent to practically everything, including the suffering of his lover and, of course, political and social problems. The book is called "The guiltless" because no one assumes themselves as responsible for the dangerous path Germany was following in those years. However, "A" will pay a price for his indifference. This novel is, then, a reflection on the social environment that led to Nazism. Broch is a dense but good writer, and I think this novel is recommended to any serious lovers of literature, but also for those interested in observing a recreation and a meditation on Germany in those three crucial decades for the world.

Broch unplugged

Arguably Broch's best novel. Not as overwrought as 'Death of Virgil', nor as tangential as 'The Sleepwalkers'. Here he finally cuts deep into the German mind tha lead to the horrors of WWII with lessons for all mankind. Brilliant.