The Tanners

"The Tanners is a contender for Funniest Book of the Year." —

The Tanners

Robert Walser — admired greatly by Kafka, Musil, and Walter Benjamin — is a radiantly original author. He has been acclaimed “unforgettable, heart-rending” (J.M. Coetzee), “a bewitched genius” (Newsweek), and “a major, truly wonderful, heart-breaking writer” (Susan Sontag). Considering Walser’s “perfect and serene oddity,” Michael Hofmann in remarked on the “Buster Keaton-like indomitably sad cheerfulness [that is] most hilariously disturbing.” called him “the dreamy confectionary snowflake of German language fiction. He also might be the single most underrated writer of the 20th century….The gait of his language is quieter than a kitten’s.”

“A clairvoyant of the small” W. G. Sebald calls Robert Walser, one of his favorite writers in the world, in his acutely beautiful, personal, and long introduction, studded with his signature use of photographs.