The Storyteller Essays

"A new translation of philosopher Walter Benjamin's work as it pertains to his famous essay, "The Storyteller," this collection includes short stories, book reviews, parables, and as a selection of writings by other authors who had an influence on Benjamin's work. Walter Benjamin's "The Storyteller" is among the greatest and most widely read essays of this ever-suggestive but also enigmatic master thinker.

Published in 1936 in an obscure Swiss review, "The Storyteller" was the product of at least a decade of ongoing reflection and composition.

What might be called the story of The Storyteller Essays starts in 1926, when Benjamin wrote an essay about one of his favorite authors, the German romantic Johann Peter Hebel, and then continues in a beautiful series of short essays, book reviews (of Arnold Bennett's novel The Old Wives' Tale, among others), short stories, parables ("The Handkerchief," written in Ibiza in 1932-1933), and even ra