Waltz: Catalan Literature

First published in 1936, and considered one of the most groundbreaking and significant novels written in Catalan, "Waltz" tells the tale of an idle, introspective, and somewhat oblivious young "man without qualities" as he stumbles through a milieu of civic upheaval and bourgeois tragedy, waltzing from one prospective bride to another, never willing to compromise his ideals, and so never quite becoming an adult. With one foot in the romanticism of Goethe or Kleist, and another in the wildly differing takes on the modern novel provided by Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust, respectively, "Waltz" is an occasionally absurd comedy of indecision and indolence structured in imitation of the dance from which it takes its title.