Jakob von Gunten
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€16.99
A01=Robert Walser
Author_Robert Walser
brothers quay
Category=FBA
cult classic
cult fiction
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
herman hesse
incarceration
institut benjamenta
institutions
literature of madness
novelists like kafka
schizophrenic writer
stefan zweig
walter benjamin
Product details
- ISBN 9781788164504
- Weight: 140g
- Dimensions: 130 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 19 Mar 2020
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The Institut Benjamenta: a school of humility for the unambitious. The young Jakob von Gunten arrives at this most curious of educational establishments with the goal of becoming 'something very small and subordinate later in life', a goal he sets about achieving with laconic dedication and wry detachment.
Irony, scepticism, absurd images and sensations, disconcerting humour, minor humiliations and minute observations mingle to form one of the signature works of twentieth century fiction. First published in 1908, a forerunner to and key influence on the work of writers such as Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard, Robert Walser's masterpiece is a paean to infinitesimal unimportance, a celebration of the marginal life that is the life of the mind.
Robert Walser was born in Switzerland in 1878 and worked as a bank clerk before becoming a writer. In 1929 he was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia and was admitted to Waldau psychiatric hospital. In 1933 he was transferred against his will to the sanitorium at Herisau, where he gave up on writing. Walser died there on Christmas Day, 1956.
