Hermann Broch is considered one of the leading European novelists of the first part of the 20th century: a contemporary of James Joyce (with whom he was often compared), of André Gide, Thomas Mann and Robert Musil. These authors revolutionized the modern novel, driven by the ambition to use the genre of the novel as an instrument of knowledge, as a work of art that would reach as Broch indicated an intellectual level comparable to that of theoretical physics since Einstein. Broch’s two major novels (The Sleepwalkers and The Death of Virgil) demonstrate this ambition. Their narrative complexity is unmatched by any other novel of the time: psychological, aesthetic, philosophical, art historical, sociological, poli

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First published 04 September 2003

Citation: L�tzeler, Paul Michael. "Hermann Broch". The Literary Encyclopedia. 4 September 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5478, accessed 9 February 2010.]