The Confusions of Young Törless

The Confusions of Young Törless is Robert Musil's literary debut, first published in 1906. It draws on Musil's own experience at a boarding school in Mährisch Weißkirchen, today Hranice, in Austria-Hungary, although the author later denied that the book was about his own youth. Its expressionistic style and explicit sexual content caused a scandal among readers and authorities at the time.

The story follows Törless, a disoriented teenager who watches three classmates, Reiting, Beineberg and Törless himself, catch Basini stealing money and decide to punish him privately rather than report him. What begins as bullying turns into sexual humiliation and growing sadism, while Törless alternates between attraction and revulsion. He tries to understand, with a rational eye, the gap between his conscious self and his irrational impulses. After the affair comes to light, the investigation blames only Basini, and Törless's confused remarks to the authorities lead to his removal from the school.

Over time the novel has been read as an early sign of some traits later associated with fascism, embodied in pupils who are orderly by day and cruel by night. Its influence has been considerable, and in 1966 Volker Schlöndorff adapted it as Young Törless, a film that became a landmark of the New German Cinema.