If you’re going to get into modernist literature it’s important to understand that it was a time when writers were trying to get away from the formal structures which had traditionally defined literature in favour of an expression of aesthetics and a mélange of emotional experience.

To try and assess a book like Der Zauerberg within a framework of traditional literary structure is like assessing a painting by Paul Klee on the basis of how physically accurate he renders his subjects, or to say that a cake is badly cooked because it doesn’t taste like a rack of lamb.