
The Man Without Qualities
Robert Musil · 1930
The great unfinished novel. Musil's sprawling, essayistic masterwork follows a man trying to find a project that will define him while Vienna falls apart before WWI. The prose is philosophical, precise, funny, and fundamentally uncertain. Its incompleteness is, at this point, part of the meaning.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.