"The scope of the material collected in this book ranges from class conditions under the liberated forces of capitalism, through the phantasmagoria of bourgeois sexuality, to the bio-politics of a state that sought to regulate even the morality of its citizens. Three of the authors represented are of Jewish origin, deeply informed by experiences and degrees of marginality: the satirist and playwright Karl Kraus (1874-1936), and the epic novelists and essayists Hermann Broch (1886-1951) and Elias Canetti (1905-94). Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956), a contemporary of the three writers, cultivated a "small," courageous literature that overcame the stable relations between repression and revolt that constitutes the literature of the Weiner Moderne."--BOOK JACKET.