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by Arthur Schnitzler (Author), Arthur C. Rauscher (Editor), Arthur C. Rauscher (Translator)
Three masterworks of psychological fiction from one of Vienna's most celebrated writers
Each novella is a window into the hidden desires, impossible choices, and private torments of lives lived beneath the polished surface of turn-of-the-century Vienna. This volume brings Schnitzler's visionary prose to a new generation of readers with:
- Modern translations from the original German
- Editor introductions
- Illustrations
- Chapter-by-chapter annotations.
Dream Story - A married couple's confessions of desire send a Viennese doctor spiraling through a single night of erotic obsession, secret ritual, and mounting dread - until the line between dream and reality dissolves entirely. The novella that inspired Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut remains one of literature's most unsettling explorations of marriage, fantasy, and the darkness we hide even from ourselves.
Fräulein Else - Nineteen-year-old Else is vacationing in the Italian Alps when a letter from home shatters her world: her family faces ruin and imprisonment, and only she can save them - if she is willing to pay a price no young woman should ever be asked to pay. Told entirely through Else's interior monologue, this searing novella places readers inside a brilliant young mind as it fractures under the weight of duty, shame, and impossible choice.
Lieutenant Gustl - After a single humiliating encounter at a Vienna concert hall threatens to destroy his honor as an officer, Lieutenant Gustl walks through the city all night with suicide as his only exit. One of the first works in Western literature to be told entirely through stream of consciousness, this groundbreaking novella strips a man's prejudices, vanities, and self-deceptions bare in real time - and finds very little underneath worth saving.
