Martin Walser (born 1927) is one of the most prolific contemporary German novelists, and one with a place in world literature. His work provides an astute critical commentary in novelistic form on postwar Germany. The present volume comprises essays by eleven Walser experts on various aspects of his writings, with concentration on the novels of the last 15 years, books such as Runaway Horse (1978), The Inner Man (1979), The Swan Villa (1980), Letter to Lord Liszt (1982), and In Defense of Childhood (1991). Parallels and influences discussed in these studies include Schiller, Richardson, Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Updike, Brecht, and Walter Kempowski.