Hermann Broch belongs to that tradition of great literary figures who transformed the European novel into a groundbreaking form of art with their work. The trilogy "Sleepwalkers" is one of the most significant achievements of European literature in the twentieth century, which, alongside the works of Kafka, Joyce, Proust, and Musil, greatly contributed to the revolution of modern narrative fiction.

The novels "1888. Pasenow or Romanticism", "Es or Anarchy", and "Hugenau or Pragmatism" respectively focus on three heroes, typical representatives of their class, who confront the crisis of values of their era. Around them swirls a plethora of characters that covers almost the entire mosaic of Central European society from the late 19th century to the age of the diabolical allure of totalitarianism.

The young sub-lieutenant von Pasenow's attempt to avoid the conflicts inherited from the previous century by seeking refuge in tradition and romanticism, and the aspiring middle-class visionary Es's longing for justice and redemption in a crumbling world torn apart by the clash of the old and the new, culminate in the third book, where, shortly before the end of World War I, the two heroes fatefully meet the amoral merchant Hugenau, an embodiment of nihilism and the dissolution of the concepts upon which the European edifice was built from the Renaissance to the Great War.

Just a step now separates the "sleepwalkers" from the impending tragic turn of History. Hannah Arendt noted that in his trilogy, Broch starts as an ordinary storyteller, only to reveal himself at the end as a poet and philosopher who is not satisfied with merely depicting the course of events, but rather is eager to discover the laws of motion that govern the collapse of values. In this way, and through an impressive and intricate literary narrative, Hermann Broch delivers to us a monumental masterpiece.