Last Days of Mankind

"Intended 'for a theatre on Mars', with a cast of nearly five hundred and running to over two hundred scenes, Karl Kraus's apocalyptic tragedy The last days of mankind is the longest, most elaborate play ever written. It is also a bitingly satirical commentary on the outbreak and subsequent course of World War I. Kraus (1874-1936) ranks as one of the greatest twentieth-century satirists. In 1899 he established his own journal, Die Fackel (The torch), to 'drain the marsh of empty phrase-making'. His work comprises essays, short stories, poetry and aphorisms, and culminated in the five-act play presented here. First published in 1920, The last days employs a collage of modernist techniques to evoke a despairing and darkly comical vision of the Great War from the perspective of the author's hometown, Vienna. At its centre, Kraus places a cabal of war-mongering press barons and self-serving hacks, whose strategies of mass manipulation he holds responsible for the very atrocities they report."--Cover.