'The Man Without Qualities' is Musil's magnum opus. The writer worked on it for over twenty years but never managed to complete it.
Despite this, 'The Man Without Qualities' has become one of the greatest works of German-language literature, which, without exaggeration, can be called the greatest study of the human soul.
1913. The government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire establishes a committee to develop a special plan of events for the celebration of the seventieth anniversary of the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph, which will take place in five years. The committee consists of industrialists, bankers, aristocrats, military personnel, and politicians. By chance, a young officer, engineer, and mathematician named Ulrich—'the man without qualities,' a cynic, devoid of meaning in life and indifferent to moral standards—finds himself among its ranks...