''Married Life'' (in Hebrew: Hayey Nisu'im חיי נישואים) is a novel written in Hebrew between 1927-1928 by Jewish novelist and poet David Vogel. The novel was first published in three sections between 1929–1931, and later on in a new edition in 1986.

Plot summary

Set in Vienna in the 1920s, ''Married Life'' is an urban novel, in which that city had witnessed defeat in the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and the collapse of the

Habsburg Empire The Habsburg monarchy (german: Habsburgermonarchie, ), also known as the Danubian monarchy (german: Donaumonarchie, ), or Habsburg Empire (german: Habsburgerreich, ), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities ...

, and plays a central role as the setting it is based in. The social decay and presentiments of an ominous future mirror the pathological relationship between Rudolf Gurdweill, a poor Jewish intellectual and Dorothea "Thea" von Takow, an Austrian baroness who takes pleasure in humiliating him at every turn. The relationship is portrayed in telling detail as the couple descends till nightmarish depths of cruelty and masochism, eventually ending in Thea's sexual betrayal of Gurdweill and her murder at his own hands.

References

Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
1931 novels 1986 novels Israeli novels {{1930s-novel-stub