The role of servant accorded with Walser's passion for the minimal: elemental happenings and small private feelings which he calls 'the true truths'. Max Brod, one of his first admirers, appositely remarked: 'After Nietzsche, Walser had to come'. Or, as Walser himself said, 'God is the opposite of Rodin'.

from Christopher Middleton's introduction to Walser's Jakob von Gunten. I haven't read a better novel this year.