La Ronde

“Another highly significant Austrian writer is Arthur Schnitzler. Most people have either read or seen his stage plays. Freud regarded him as his Doppelgänger. He said Schnitzler had put his (Freud’s) ideas into fiction. Schnitzler is very acute on the louche side of Viennese life. There was massive repression, officially, on sexual desire, which naturally had to find an outlet—Vienna was the city with the most prostitutes in Europe. There’s La Ronde by Schnitzler, which is a drama that’s particularly about that over-sensualised world. He was really a very, very good writer.” Read more...

The best books on Austria

Nicholas Parsons, Historian