Anecdotes

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sublunary Editions (January 1, 2021)
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1955190070
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1955190077

"Here is a welcome sigh, the works of a master, even when published separately for no special reason, still have a valid life of their own, and perhaps in this form strike our jaded eyes with more clarity than ever." — Franz Kafka, on Anecdotes

Long available and celebrated in German, Anecdotes gathers the first extensive English-language collection of Heinrich von Kleist’s short fiction and feuilletonic digressions that appeared in Berliner Abendblätter, the newspaper for which he served as editor from 1810 to 1811. Writing under increasingly unfriendly social and political conditions, this is arguably Kleist at his funniest and most irreverent, not shying away from dirty jokes while nevertheless displaying the same knack for the stylish prose that Rilke called “beautiful and so blind and skillful”.

Heinrich von Kleist was a German-language novelist, dramatist, journalist, purported spy, newspaperman, and poet. Best known in his own time for his theatrical works, he is perhaps most famous today for the short novels, Michael Kohlhaas and The Marquise of O.

Matthew Spencer lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America.