Pirandello is one of the most famous and important cultural figures of Italian modernism, and his work is deeply invested in responding to the rapidly changing forces of modernization. This chapter examines his complex relationship with modernity through a comparison to the Italian avant-garde movement of Futurism: Where the Futurists were focused on using their cultural production to usher in and intensify processes of technological modernization, Pirandello’s stance is more complex and ambivalent. The chapter thus traces their responses to a shared set of cultural conditions, spanning from a shared rejection of scientific materialism and positivism to engagement with new models of sociology, psychology, and philosophy, and finally considers their divergent views of cinema and the promise of technology to transform the future.

This chapter is divided into three sections examining Brecht’s literary influences, his achievements as a writer of fiction, and his legacy. It considers Brecht’s admiration for prose writers including Döblin, Büchner, Grimmelshausen, Wodehouse, Kipling, and Hašek. It argues that these readings, alongside Brecht’s interest in Nietzsche and the Vienna Circle, helped to inform his understanding of language as a form of practical intervention. Brecht sees language as a rhetorical tool kit, a “handle” that can be used to change reality. The chapter also argues that Brecht’s fiction is characterized by “blunt thinking,” employed as a means of ideological critique. This is shown by a consideration of Brecht’s two masterworks of short philosophical fiction, Stories of Mr. Keuner and Refugee Conversations, and his three experimental novels, Threepenny Novel, the Tui-Novel, and The Business Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar. The chapter concludes with some brief observations about Brecht’s enduring significance for German prose fiction from the mid-twentieth century until the present day, also noting his influence on the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.