SOURCE: Butler, Michael. “A Portrait of Vanity.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5180 (19 July 2002): 23.

In the following review, Butler chronicles the controversial Jewish reception of Tod eines Kritikers, outlining the plot and themes in the context of Walser's literary practices.

For a people who have long perceived self-effacing dullness as a desirable quality of civil society, contemporary Germans appear to love nothing more than a good row. These have come at regular intervals since Unification in 1990. Furious debates have been unleashed, for example, on the quality and significance of East German literature, on the centrality of German culture in the context of multiculturalism, and on memory and national identity. In a way that is hard to imagine in Britain, these issues have been debated vigorously throughout the media, above all in the feuilletons and political sections of the leading newspapers. Moreover, writers, intellectuals and leading politicians often confront each other...