This monograph affirms the richness that interdisciplinarity brings to Austrian and German studies. Esther Bauer skillfully weaves connections among four novels: Baum’s Menschen im Hotel (Grand Hotel) (1929) and stud, chem. Helen Willfiier (Helene) (1928), Kafka’s Der Verschollene (Amerika: The Missing Person) (written 1911-1914, published 1927), Mann’s Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) (1924), and fifteen paintings (including four by Christian Schad, three by Otto Dix, and two by Egon Schiele). She compellingly demonstrates how each subverts the traditional, bourgeois system of order—specifically the gender binary. In accessible language, Bauer synthesizes her meticulous and probing dissections of the literary and visual artworks with historical and contemporary discussions of social context, critical theory, and philosophy (for instance, Butler, Barthes, de Beauvoir, Lacan); plus she includes deft biblical and art-historical references to ground her probing interpretations.