The most important German aesthetician and literary critic of this century
- George Steiner,
Benjamin was one of the unclassifiable ones ... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre.
- Hannah Arendt,
Benjamin was the interlocutor of all the demons and angels of storytelling. And this is why he knew its endless secrets. Listen to him.
- John Berger,
A complex and brilliant writer
J. M. Coetzee
This collection, introduced by Susan Sontag, contains the most representative and illuminating selection of his work over a twenty-year period, and thus does full justice to the richness and the multi-dimensional nature of his thought. Included in these pages are aphorisms and townscapes, esoteric meditation and reminiscences of childhood, and reflections on language, psychology, aesthetics and politics.