Jakob von Gunten

Jakob von Gunten is a novel by the Swiss writer Robert Walser, first published in German in 1909 under the subtitle "A Diary". Walser drew on his own experiences: after arriving in Berlin in 1905 he attended a school for servants and, the following winter, worked as a butler at the castle of Dambrau in Upper Silesia.

The novel is narrated in the first person by Jakob, a young man from a well-off family who runs away from home to escape the overbearing shadow of his father, an alderman with a car and horse at his disposal. He resolves to spend his life serving others and enrols at the Benjamenta Institute, a school for servants where, oddly, no teachers are ever seen. Instruction falls to Lisa Benjamenta, the headmaster's sister, and consists mainly of learning by heart a brochure and a set of rules. The pupils willingly let themselves be treated like children, while Jakob, proud and self-assured, watches the decline of the institution with irony; its motto is "little, but thoroughly". His relationship with the headmaster, who confesses an affection he cannot control, adds a strange and ambiguous tension to the story.

The book has no conventional plot. It moves through obsessive digressions on objects, light and smiles, with a narrator who feigns naivety while showing considerable perceptiveness. After a long period of neglect, the novel gained recognition over the years; J. M. Coetzee reviewed it in 2000, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung included it among the great novels of the twentieth century. Franz Kafka owned a copy and called it a good book.