Join us at the Deutsches House for our launch of Intimate Ties, two novellas by Robert Musil. The novel’s translator Peter Wortsman will be joined in conversation by Austrian literary scholar Kathrin Holzermeyr-Rosenfield, who translated the original text into Portuguese, and Fatima Naqvi, literary scholar and professor of German and Film Studies at Rutgers University. Writer and translator Tess Lewis will be moderating.

First published in 1911, Intimate Ties is Robert Musil’s second book, consisting of two novellas, “The Culmination of Love” and “The Temptation of Silent Veronica.” Each revolves around a troubled woman in the throes of her sexual and romantic woes, as their memories of the past return to influence their present desires. Musil tracks the psyche of his protagonists in a blurring of impressions that is reflected in his experimental prose. Intimate Ties offers the reader an early glimpse of the high modernist style Musil would perfect in his magnum opus The Man Without Qualities.