The Storyteller Essays

"A master of the essay, list, theoretical long-take, fragment, aphorism, speech, pedagogical manifesto, and even the book review, Benjamin commanded a variety of prose forms." --The Guardian

"Benjamin famously wrote that 'knowledge comes only in lightning flashes. The text is the long roll of thunder that follows.' ...the experience of reading Benjamin feels a little like the reverse. You are set down in a dense and unfamiliar city, and have to work to get your bearings. It can seem aimless, an endless roll of thunder, until you stop to breathe for a moment, to linger on an old word or an image slightly aslant, and--suddenly--you take in a new illumination." --David Wallace, The New Yorker

"The German-Jewish essayist and cultural theorist Walter Benjamin remains a fascinating puzzle for readers and critics alike. There was no one quite like him: a philosopher at home in literature, a creative writer proficient in political theory and art history, a dedicated collector of things that have been forgotten or suppressed, an astute observer of modernity and technology who was as interested in mysticism as in Marxism." --Elif Shafak, Financial Times