Hunchbacked dwarf

Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: This is a collection of essays where Benjamin examines the people and events of his childhood in Berlin through a fragmented lens. Before his death, Benjamin hid the manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and it was rediscovered and brought back into the world four decades later. In this work, scenes of urban life in Berlin around 1900, as experienced by the author, along with personal incidents and objects—from the inner balconies of Berlin buildings, the Victory Monument, Tiergarten Park, telephones, zoos, panoramas, hide-and-seek, children's books, Christmas angels, ghosts, and more—are filtered and explored through his thought, presented in a way that is extremely dense and deeply felt with information and emotion. The author's highly charming personal style and novel perspectives on things are fully brought to life here. Western critics have hailed it as "one of the most beautiful essays of our time."