Kleine Dichtungen (Small Poems or Little Compositions) is a collection of Robert Walser’s shorter German prose pieces — the miniature form in which he was perhaps most purely himself. Walser’s short prose, written with extreme care for rhythm and tone, occupies a unique space between poetry and fiction, sketch and meditation, humor and melancholy.
W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, and J. M. Coetzee all championed Walser as one of the great unrecognized modernists. These kleine Dichtungen are an ideal entry point into his world. Download this free public-domain EPUB to encounter one of the most quietly original voices in German literature.