<i>The Confusions of Young Torless</i> is a taut, powerful depiction of teenage masculinity in this short novel set in an Austrian military academy. An unpopular boy is gradually bullied and humiliated by a coterie of better-off classmates until the almost unbearable conclusion. This was the work which made Musil''s name and is his most popular work before his unfinished masterpiece, <i>The Man Without Qualities</i>.