When The Quest for Christa T. was first published in East Germany ten years ago, there was an immediate storm: bookshops in East Berlin were given instructions to sell it only to well-known customers professionally involved in literary matters; at the ann
How to place the mysterious Swiss writer Robert Walser, a humble genius who possessed one of the most elusive and surprising sensibilities in modern literature? Walser is many things: a Paul Klee in words, maker of droll, whimsical, tender, and heartbreak
The Swiss writer of whom Hermann Hesse famously declared, “If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place,” Robert Walser (1878–1956) is only now finding an audience among English-speaking readers commensurate with his merit
'For me the sketches I produce now and then are shortish or longish chapters of a novel. The novel I am constanly writing is always the same one, and it might be described as a variously sliced-up or torn-apart book of myself.? One of the great writers of
The Swiss writer Robert Walser is one of the quiet geniuses of twentieth-century literature. Largely self-taught and altogether indifferent to worldly success, Walser wrote a range of short stories, essays and four novels, of which Jakob von Gunten is wid
"Auto-da-Fé" is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Germany between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destru
A compelling account of the development of a great artist, and a portrait of the tragic character of an entire eraThe uncompromising achievement of Elias Canetti has been matched by few writers this century. Canetti worked brilliantly in many forms, but t
Winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Literature, Elias Canetti uncovers the secret life hidden beneath Marrakesh’s bewildering array of voices, gestures and faces. In a series of sharply etched scenes, he portrays the languages and cultures of the people
This collection of more than two hundred of Nietzsche’s letters offers a representative body of correspondence on subjects of main concern to him—philosophy, history, morals, music and literature. Also included are letters of biographical interest whi
