In einer Pariser Schenke spielen Gäste und Schauspieler mit den Rollen von Verbrechern und Opfern. Vor dem Hintergrund der Französischen Revolution verwischen die Grenzen zwischen inszenierter Gefahr und wirklicher Gewalt.

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Schnitzler, Arthur

Arthur Schnitzler was born in Vienna in 1862 into a cultivated Jewish family and trained as a physician before turning fully to literature, a background that gave him an unusually sharp eye for the hidden motives, anxieties, and self-deceptions of modern life. Writing in the fin-de-siècle world of Vienna, he became one of the most penetrating voices of his generation, producing plays, stories, and novels that explored desire, memory, jealousy, hypocrisy, and the fragile boundary between public respectability and private truth. His work often examines the ways social convention shapes intimacy, especially in the lives of the urban middle class, and he was especially skilled at revealing how people perform versions of themselves even in moments that seem most sincere. Because of this psychological precision, his writing still feels strikingly modern: it captures the loneliness beneath social polish, the instability of identity, and the complicated ethics of love and freedom. Schnitzler’s influence reaches far beyond his own era, helping to pave the way for modernist fiction and drama with its interior focus and candid treatment of sexuality and consciousness. Readers today continue to find in his work a clear, unsparing intelligence and a deep sympathy for human vulnerability. He will especially appeal to readers who enjoy psychologically rich literature, elegant prose, and incisive portraits of society and the self.