The Last Days of Mankind: A Tragedy in Five Acts Kraus KarlPaperback

Intended 'for a theatre on Mars', with a cast of nearly 500 and running to over 200 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