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The novel "On the Edge of Reason" (1938) is Krleža's only novel in the first person. A doctor of law morally condemns a powerful industrialist at a banquet, thereby provoking a general social boycott, persecution, and his own downfall.
Published in 1938, the novel "On the Edge of Reason" is a sharp satirical condemnation of the petty-bourgeois hypocrisy, conformity, and moral misery of Zagreb's social elite on the eve of World War II. The plot follows an unnamed fifty-two-year-old doctor of law, a longtime respected legal representative, who spontaneously and brazenly protests against the respected industrialist and powerful man Domačinski at a dinner party, portraying his wealth as the result of crime and exploitation.
This one unacceptable step away from prescribed social norms sets off an avalanche: his surroundings disown him overnight, his wife leaves him, friends and acquaintances turn their backs on him, and lies about his madness spread throughout the city. Faced with an organized boycott, investigations, prosecution, and imprisonment, the protagonist refuses to compromise. Through internal monologues and encounters with the marginalized, Krleža masterfully exposes collective human stupidity as the primary driving force of a totalitarian and hypocritical society, creating a timeless study of a lonely individual who chooses rebellion over adaptation.
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