The Last Days of Mankind – A Visual Guide to Karl Kraus’ Great War Epic

Artwork by Deborah SenglContributions by Marjorie Perloff, Matthias Goldmann, Anna Souchuk and Paul Reitter November 2018. Hardcover. 112 pages with 60 color images.$38.95 | 9780999754412 (hc) When the age died by its own hand, that hand was Karl Kraus’.– Bertolt Brecht With critical success over the past four years, artist Deborah Sengl (b. 1974) has exhibited taxidermied rats, drawings and paintings in order to restage Karl Kraus’ nearly-unperformable play The Last Days of Mankind (Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, 1915–22). Featuring Sengl’s entire installation, the DoppelHouse Press edition also includes essays that examine her ambitious dramaturgy, which condenses Kraus’ ten-to-fifteen hour drama into an abridged reading of its themes: human barbarism, the role of journalism in war, the sway of popular opinion and the absurdities of nationalism. Select translations of Kraus’ original provide a window to see his other “war” — a war on the misuses of language itself. Published in con