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Title: A glimpse into adolescent angst, Viennese style
Review: Robert Musil is best-known for a very long novel (A Man Without Qualities) that few people have read. Young Törless is his first novel, as concise as it is memorable. Rather than a sprawling overview of the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire, this chilling little novel focuses on the insecurities and corruptions of young man in a boarding school. Whether you take an interest in it for the metaphors of international power struggles (no coincidence that the "feminine," exploited boy is Italian), the sadistically expressed homosexuality of these upper class kids, or the psychological study of adolescent angst at the turn of the 20th century, it's a compelling read. It was made into a film in 1966 by Volker Schlöndorff, with music by Hans Werner Henze.
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