The Demons: Volume One -- Heimito Von Doderer

<p>Regarded by many as the most important Austrian novel of its era, Heimito von Doderer's <em>The Demons</em> is a sweeping portrayal of Viennese society on the cusp of catastrophic and irrevocable change. </p><p><br></p><p>Narrated by retired civil servant Georg von Geyrenhoff, this monumental work takes readers on an intimate, multi-layered tour through Vienna's cafés<em> </em>and kitchens, bedrooms and back alleys, modest apartments and artist's ateliers, palatial parlors and wooded parks, a basement, and a burning palace. </p><p><br></p><p>As a great conductor harmonizes a hundred discordant instruments into a concert, so too Heimoto von Doderer has blended his riotous cast of characters into a symphony that chronicles the cataclysmic events that alter, even end, these characters' lives.</p><p><br></p><p>Each note adds, however minutely, to the whole.</p><p><br></p><p>The paradoxes of this novel-which von Doderer wrote and revised over the course of twenty five years-are born from the paradoxes of Europe after the first world war, with its superficial peace and order layered over a festering decline and despair that erupts into World War II. But amidst the background of Vienna's historical July Revolt, which culminated in the Palace of Justice set aflame, <em>The Demons </em>asks us to see significance in even the smallest kitchen fire too-to see the souls beneath the world-historical heavings. </p><p><br></p><p>The Wiseblood Double-Volume contains both an extended intr