Hermann Broch (1886-1951) was an Austrian writer, dramatist, philosopher, prose writer, and essayist. He shared the fate of many of his contemporaries - including fellow countrymen Franz Kafka and Robert Musil, who were overlooked by readers during their lifetimes but suddenly gained status as great masters of literature and true classics of the 20th century after their deaths.
The novel "The Death of Vergil" (published in 1945) is arguably the most significant of Hermann Broch's works. Like Joyce, Broch restricts the timeframe of the sprawling narrative to just a few hours - the last hours of the celebrated Roman poet Vergil, during which the inflamed consciousness of the dying poet reviews the years he has lived and reassesses his poetic achievements. In the dying Vergil's reflections on the turning point era in which he lived, there is an implied similarity to the time experienced by his contemporaries in the first half of the 20th century.
