The German author Jakob Wassermann (1873-1934) combined a romanticized psychoanalysis with an almost journalistic sensationalism. He used a narrative technique that verged at times on the surrealistic and was heavily laden with symbol and constructed myth.

Jakob Wassermann was born on March 10, 1873, in Fürth, the son of a Jewish merchant. After a childhood with many restrictions, he began his career as an office clerk, in Munich and then in Freiburg. In 1898 he moved to Vienna and eventually established himself as a writer. Derivative and imitative, Wassermann's novels showed from the outset a strong dependence upon Fyodor Dostoevsky--particularly in his fondness for the psychological probing of criminals and social outcasts--as well as the influence of the master of the romantic horror and detective story, E. T. A. Hoffmann.

Wassermann's first significant work is Die Juden von Zirndorf (1897; The Jews of Zirndorf), in which his deep knowledge of...