Public Benjamin

Collector, translator, champion of Kafka and Brecht, Walter Benjamin spent
the first decades of this century developing a lyrical, cabbalistic style of
literary criticism. Pimlico’s handsome paperback reprint of
Illuminations—a posthumous collection of essays on everything from the
nature of translation to the relationship between art and mechanical
reproduction—is the latest word in retro intellectual fashion. Published
by Pimlico, £10, ISBN 0712665757.