"Beneath Walser's placid, august prose lies a gnawing ambivalence about the relationship between life and art and between industry and Romanticism. Fans of W. G. Sebald will particularly enjoy Walser's contemplative prose."
Booklist "The incredible shrinking writer is a major twentieth-century prose artist who…can be placed in that comic tradition [that] runs form Gogol through Kafka and down to ... Read moreJosé Saramago…When Walser met Lenin in Zurich during the war, all he had to say was ‘So you, too, like fruitcake?’…It is remarkable to see what variety and richness, what easiness and charm, what winsome inanities and philosophical depths he could pack into half a page."
Benjamin Kunkel - The New Yorker "There's a quiet dignity found in Walser's funny, stunning and enigmatic novels."
John Goldbach - The Globe and Mail "It glides by like clouds escorted by sunbeams, and it leaves in its wake a series of jaw-dropping scenes."
Scott Esposito - The Quarterly Conversation Show Less