Hands Around

Arthur Schnitzler's Hands Around is a daring cycle of ten linked dialogues that traces desire across Vienna's social world, from street girls and soldiers to servants, lovers, and married couples. Set against the wit, irony, and elegance of fin-de-siècle society, the work is less a scandalous provocation than a finely tuned study of seduction, manners, and disappointment, revealing the emotional emptiness that can linger after physical intimacy. The opening encounters move from a late-night bargain near the Augarten Bridge to flirtation in the Prater Gardens, where charm, teasing, and loneliness turn desire into something fleeting and transactional. Later scenes shift into domestic interiors and secret rooms, where a maid, a young man, a veiled wife, and a husband navigate heat, boredom, secrecy, and the thrill of discovery. Across these meetings, Schnitzler exposes the shifting power between men and women, the performance of respectability, and the uneasy border between tenderness and manipulation. As the cycle circles back to its beginning, it becomes a subtle, realistic portrait of longing, class, marriage, and the hidden tensions beneath civilized life. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.