Clairvoyant of the Small The Life of Robert Walser

"Masterful. . . . This balanced and meticulous account shines a bright light on a misunderstood and influential writer."-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
The great Swiss-German modernist author Robert Walser lived eccentrically on the fringes of society, shocking his Berlin friends by enrolling in butler school and later developing an urban-nomad lifestyle in the Swiss capital, Bern, before checking himself into a psychiatric clinic. A connoisseur of power differentials, his pronounced interest in everything inconspicuous and modest-social outcasts and artists as well as the impoverished, marginalized, and forgotten-prompted W. G. Sebald to dub him "a clairvoyant of the small." His revolutionary use of short prose forms won him the admiration of Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Robert Musil, and many others.