A review by blueyorkie
O Jovem Törless by Lya Luft, Robert Musil

5.0

This story of teenagers who allow themselves to persecute one of their own because they consider him inferior saw by others as a premonition of Nazism. But this book also tells us about the victim's behavior, ideas, and calculations that lead the torturers and victims to humiliate and allow themselves to have done, respectively. The inner life and how it is shaken or stimulated by adolescence were well described independently of the history of persecution or perhaps in connection with it. The Confessions (plural) of the pupil Törless do not speak to us only of persecution of school harassment. They are also present throughout the novel, the concern linked to our place in the world at the dawn of the 20th century, the theme of adolescence, pederasty and the search for one's sexuality, belief and doubt in the school institution, the quest for meaning, etc. It was a vibrant, well-written novel with images whose central theme is brand and education.