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  • Published: 15 September 2016
  • ISBN: 9781681370163
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $35.00

Girlfriends, Ghosts, And Other Stories




Now in English for the first time, this new collection of Robert Walser's stories gives readers a sample of the inimitable author's style and wit throughout his career. We are pleased to add Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories to our collection of Walser books in the NYRB Classics series.

Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories brings together eighty-one brief texts spanning Robert Walser’s career, from pieces conceived amid his early triumphs to later works written at a psychiatric clinic in Bern. Many were published in the feuilleton sections of newspapers during Walser’s life; others were jotted down on slips of paper and all but forgotten. They are strung together like consciousness, idiosyncratic and vulnerable, genuine in their irony, wistful in their humor. Some dwell on childish or transient topics—carousels, the latest hairstyles, an ekphrasis of the illustrations in a picture book—others on the grand themes of nature, art, and love. But they remain conversational, almost lighter than air. Every emotion ventured takes on the weight of a sincerity that is imperiled as soon as it comes into contact with the outside world, which retains all of the novelty it had in childhood—and all of the danger.

  • Published: 15 September 2016
  • ISBN: 9781681370163
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $35.00

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Praise for Girlfriends, Ghosts, And Other Stories

"The moral core of Walser's art is the refusal of power; of domination.... Walser's virtues are those of the most mature, most civilized art. He is a truly wonderful, heartbreaking writer." -- Susan Sontag

"If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place." -- Hermann Hesse

"A writer of considerable wit, talent and originality .... recognized by such impressive contemporaries as Kafka, Brod, Hesse and Musil .... [and] primarily known to German literary scholars and to English readers lucky enough to have discovered [his work] .... [Walser's 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

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