Recommendations
Books Like Die Strudlhofstiege (The Strudlhof Steps)
Books for readers who loved Doderer's vast Vienna novel of city life and two time periods
Heimito von Doderer's 1951 Die Strudlhofstiege is the great Austrian novel of Vienna — nine hundred pages, two time periods (1910–12 and 1923–25), a baroque network of characters from all social classes intersecting around an outdoor staircase. These eight books share its qualities: the vast city novel where place is character, the multi-strand plot that finds its meaning in intersection rather than resolution, and the tradition of the European long novel as a total act of social observation.
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Buy on AmazonThe Man Without Qualities
by Robert Musil
The other great Austrian novel of pre-war Vienna — where Musil is satirical and philosophical, Doderer is social and elegiac; the two together give the full spectrum of the Austrian novel's approach to the same world.
- 2
Buy on AmazonIn Search of Lost Time
by Marcel Proust
The model for Doderer's two-time-period structure — Proust's recovery of the past through memory is the French version of what Doderer is doing with the relationship between 1910–12 and 1923–25 in Die Strudlhofstiege.
- 3
Buy on AmazonThe Radetzky March
by Joseph Roth
Roth's elegiac account of the Austrian Empire's decline — a shorter, more concentrated approach to the same social world; Roth's personal loss and Doderer's sociological breadth are complementary.
- 4
Buy on AmazonBuddenbrooks
by Thomas Mann
The German long novel of a social world observed across generations — Mann's Lübeck and Doderer's Vienna are both cities whose social texture is the real subject of a long novel that uses families as its instrument.
- 5
Buy on AmazonMiddlemarch
by George Eliot
The great English multi-strand city novel — Middlemarch's web of intersecting characters in a provincial English town is the closest English-language parallel to Doderer's Vienna web.
- 6
Buy on AmazonThe Demons
by Heimito von Doderer
The sequel to Die Strudlhofstiege — continues the characters through 1927 and the Vienna riots; even longer and more socially comprehensive; the natural continuation for readers who want more Doderer.
- 7
Buy on AmazonThe Tin Drum
by Günter Grass
The German novel that uses a city (Danzig) as its total subject — where Doderer is elegiac, Grass is grotesque; both are German-language novels where the city's social and historical texture is the whole point.
- 8
Buy on AmazonBerlin Alexanderplatz
by Alfred Döblin
Berlin as the German equivalent of Doderer's Vienna — Döblin's 1929 modernist city novel, using the same vast social network and multiple time streams as Die Strudlhofstiege but in an expressionist rather than realist mode.
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