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| Author | Hermann Broch |
|---|---|
| Language | German |
| Genre | Philosophical novel |
Publication date | 1930–32 |
| Publication place | Austria |
| Media type | |
The Sleepwalkers (German: Die Schlafwandler) 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.[1] 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.
An English translation in 1932 by Edwin and Willa Muir received good reviews and the work has been admired since World War II by serious European critics, who put Broch in the company of Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Robert Musil as well as James Joyce and Marcel Proust.[1]