Robert Walser

Born in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, in 1878, Robert Walser left school young and worked a string of modest jobs, including clerk, copyist, assistant, and butler. That close view of everyday working life fed directly into his writing, which often finds wonder, comedy, and unease in the most ordinary moments.

He wrote poems, short prose, and novels, and is especially known for books such as Jakob von Gunten, The Assistant, and The Tanners. His style can seem playful, wandering, and deceptively simple, but it has had a deep influence on later writers; Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, and many others admired his work.

After periods in Berlin and Switzerland, Walser spent his later years in psychiatric institutions and stopped publishing new literary work after the early 1930s. He died in 1956, and his reputation only grew afterward, as more readers discovered how singularly he could capture loneliness, freedom, humor, and the strange beauty of everyday life.