From the author of 'A Man without Qualities, ' a novel about
spirituality in the modern world.
**
** Agathe is the sister of Ulrich, the restless and elusive "man without
qualities" at the center of Robert Musil's great, unfinished novel of
the same name. For years Agathe and Ulrich have ignored each other, but
when brother and sister find themselves reunited over the bier of their
dead father, they are electrified. Each is the other's spitting image,
and Agathe, who has just separated from her husband, is even more
defiant and inquiring than Ulrich. Beginning with a series of
increasingly intense "holy conversations," the two gradually enlarge the
boundaries of sexuality, sensuality, identity, and understanding in
pursuit of a new, true form of being that they are seeking to discover.
Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities is perhaps the most
profoundly exploratory and unsettling masterpiece of twentieth-century
fiction. Agathe, or, The Forgotten Sister reveals with new clarity a
particular dimension of this multidimensional book--the dimension that
meant the most to Musil himself and that inspired some of his most
searching writing. The outstanding translator Joel Agee captures the
acuity, audacity, and unsettling poetry of a book that is meant to be
nothing short of life-changing.
