In extremis

Arthur Schnitzler, Fräulein Else. 1924. In Desire and Delusion: Three Novellas, trans. Margret Schaefer (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003).

Schnitzler’s novella Lieutenant Gustl (1900) marks the first sustained use of interior monologue in European literature. Twenty-four years later, Fräulein Else takes the form of an interior monologue by a young woman who seeks to keep her debtor father from prison by approaching an old family friend for money. The friend has agreed, but has exacted a price.

Everything in this volume is desperation, suspicion, and madness. Highly recommended.

Also from Schnitzler
“Maestro!” : “A simple bourgeois home” : To Vienna by train