Cover of Jakob von Gunten

Jakob von Gunten

by Robert Walser

3.8
(11 ratings)
200 pages2014New York Review of BooksISBN 9781590178188

About this book

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, as well as four novels, of which <i>Jakob von Gunten</i> is widely recognized as the finest. The book is a young man's inquisitive and irreverent account of life in what turns out to be the most uncanny of schools. It is the work of an outsider artist, a writer of uncompromising originality and disconcerting humor, whose beautiful sentences have the simplicity and strangeness of a painting by Henri Rousseau.

Publication Details

Publisher
New York Review of Books
Published
2014
Pages
200
ISBN
9781590178188
Language
en

About Robert Walser

Robert Walser (* 15. April 1878 in Biel, Kanton Bern; † 25. Dezember 1956 nahe Herisau, Kanton Appenzell Ausserrhoden) war ein deutschsprachiger Schweizer Schriftsteller. Walser verfasste vier Romane – *Jakob von Gunten, Geschwister Tanner, Der Gehülfe* und *Der Räuber* –, die längere Erzählung *Der Spaziergang* sowie Kurzgeschichten und Essays. Er gilt als bedeutender Vertreter der literarischen Moderne und der sogenannten Angestelltenliteratur. Seine unkonventionellen, teils rätselhaft wirkenden Werke wurden von Zeitgenossen wie Walter Benjamin, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil und Kurt Tucholsky geschätzt. Trotz Anfangserfolgen blieb Robert Walser der kommerzielle Durchbruch verwehrt. Den grössten Teil seines Lebens verbrachte er in Armut. Nach psychischen Problemen lebte er von 1929 bis zu seinem Tod in Heil- und Pflegeanstalten. Heute gilt er als einer der wichtigsten Schweizer Schriftsteller des 20. Jahrhunderts, und sein Werk wird international rezipiert. ---------- Robert Walser (born April 15, 1878, in Biel, Canton of Bern; died December 25, 1956, near Herisau, Canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden) was a German-language Swiss writer. Walser wrote four novels—*Jakob von Gunten, The Tanner Siblings, The Assistant,* and *The Robber*—as well as the novella The Walk, short stories, and essays. He is considered a significant figure in literary modernism and the so-called "white-collar" literature. His unconventional, sometimes enigmatic works were appreciated by contemporaries such as Walter Benjamin, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Kurt Tucholsky. Despite initial success, Robert Walser never achieved commercial success. He spent most of his life in poverty. After suffering from mental health problems, he lived in psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes from 1929 until his death. Today, he is considered one of the most important Swiss writers of the 20th century, and his work is internationally acclaimed.

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