Berlin Stories

"Discursive and fascinating...a writer who strongly influenced several far more famous ones.... He is a brilliant miniaturist, and his best work retains a remarkable immediacy." --Bruce Allen, Chicago Tribune

"A writer of considerable wit, talent and originality...recognized by such impressive contemporaries as Kafka, Brod, Hesse and Musil.... [His tales] are to be read slowly and savored...[and] are filled with lovely and disturbing moments that will stay with the reader for some time to come." --Ronald De Feo, The New York Times

"A major twentieth-century prose artist who can be placed in that comic tradition that runs from Gogol through Kafka and down to José Saramago.... It is remarkable to see what variety and richness, what easiness and charm, what winsome inanities and philosophical depths he could pack into half a page." --Benjamin Kunkel, The New Yorker

"Kleist, Musil, Rilke, Broch have been freshly translated or republished...Thomas Mann continues to fascinate (and repel); Gunter Grass, Heinrich Boll and Max Frisch are world famous. To this company should be added Robert Walser." --The Washington Post

"Spasmodic, excitable lyricism..." --Philip Lopate