100,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

Auckland Bookstore open 7 Days, 8:30- 5pm for browsing and Pick Ups 🎉📚

The Storyteller

Tales out of Loneliness
By Walter Benjamin
0.0 (0 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin delves into the art of storytelling, exploring the profound intersection of narrative and experience. Through its characters and evocative settings, the book reflects on the decline of traditional storytelling in the face of modernity and the significance of shared human stories. Blending fiction with philosophical insights, it invites readers to contemplate the role of memory and imagination in understanding and conveying human experiences.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$5300

International Supplier

This title is in-stock with overseas suppliers. While it is not available locally, we fly books in weekly from the US and UK to our Auckland warehouse for immediate dispatch.

AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 2-3 weeks

Found a better price? Request a price match

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you appreciate philosophical reflections and the art of storytelling. Walter Benjamin's exploration of how traditional storytelling can offer profound insights and connect generations is both thought-provoking and timeless. Perfect for those interested in cultural history and literary theory.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

A beautiful collection of the legendary thinker's short stories

A beautiful collection of the legendary thinker’s short stories

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The Storyteller gathers for the first time the fiction of the legendary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, best known for his groundbreaking studies of culture and literature, including Illuminations, One-Way Street, and The Arcades Project.

His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold between rational and hallucinatory realms, celebrate the importance of games, delve into the peculiar relationship between gambling and fortune-telling, and explore the themes that defined Benjamin.

The novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables, and riddles in this collection are brought to life by the playful imagery of the modernist artist and Bauhaus figure Paul Klee.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Walter Benjamin is celebrated for his profound storytelling insights, exploring the interface between stories, dreams, and reality. This compilation reveals his experimental narratives, delivered in short, fragmented forms that often probe deeper into human conditions amid adversity. Notably praised by critics like John Berger and Judith Butler, the collection elegantly combines critical essays with short tales, highlighting Benjamin's unique style that defies traditional classification and challenges readers to engage with the depths of storytelling.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781804290415

Publisher: Verso Books

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 21 March 2023

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Verso Books

Contributors:

  • Illustrated by Paul Klee
  • Edited by Esther Leslie
  • Edited by Sam Dolbear
  • Edited by Sebastian Truskolaski

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 15.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 195g

Pages: 240

Collections

Fiction General Fiction Philosophy & Psychology Philosophy & Stoicism Walter Benjamin

About the Author

Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama.

Also by Walter Benjamin

View all
  • Aesthetics and Politics
    Delve into the profound and influential Marxist aesthetic debates that shaped the course of 20th-century intellectual history with Aesthetics and Politics. This seminal work assembles the pivotal texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art that took place between the 1930s and 1950s in German culture—an era that witnessed an unparalleled tradition of major aesthetic discourse. The book...
    By Georg Lukács and Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch and Theodor Adorno
    Paperback
    $2499
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Buy to Win
    One-Way Street and Other Writings
    Introduction by Amit Chaudhuri; translated by J.A. Underwood Walter Benjamin - philosopher, essayist, literary and cultural theorist - was one of the most original writers and thinkers of the twentieth century. This new selection brings together Benjamin's major works, including One-Way Street, his dreamlike, aphoristic observations of urban life in Weimar Germany; Unpacking My Library, a delightful meditation on book-collecting;...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $3000
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Buy to Win
    Unpacking My Library
    90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Every sort of passion verges on chaos, I know, but what the collecting passion verges on is a chaos of memories. From intimate musings on his book collection to a dream-like trip through the bustling streets of Marseille, each of these essays offers a compelling journey into the mind of one...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Paperback
    $1799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Berlin Childhood around 1900
    Completed in exile in Paris, as the Second World War was dawning, Walter Benjamin looks back at the city of his birth at the beginning of the century. Berlin Childhood around 1900 is both a sensory memoir of childhood as well as a tour of the iconic spaces of the city. These are expeditions into the depths of memory, moving...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Hardback
    $3699
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Understanding Brecht
    The relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in Germany, Benjamin and Brecht, both independently minded Marxists with a deep understanding of and passionate commitment to the emancipatory potential of cultural practices, continued to discuss, argue, and correspond on topics as varied...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Paperback
    $2999
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Correspondence 1930-1940
    Correspondence 1930-1940
    ‘We must see to it that we put the best of ourselves in our letters; for there is nothing to suggest that we shall see each other again soon.’ So wrote Walter Benjamin to Gretel Adorno in spring 1940 from the south of France, shortly before he took his own life. The correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin, published...
    By Walter Benjamin and Gretel Adorno
    Paperback
    $3599
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Arcades Project
    "To great writers," Walter Benjamin once wrote, "finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labour their entire lives." Conceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, The Arcades Project (in German, Das Passagen-Werk) is a monumental ruin, meticulously constructed over the course of thirteen years—"the theatre," as Benjamin called...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Paperback
    $13400
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Unpacking My Library
    "I fully realise that my discussion of the mental climate of collecting will confirm many of you in your conviction that this passion is behind the times, in your distrust of the collector type. Nothing is further from my mind than to shake either your conviction or your distrust." Walter Benjamin was one of the great cultural critics of the...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Book
    $1499
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings
    Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings highlights one of the most original and important critical voices of the twentieth century. Until now, only a few of his writings have been available in English. Harvard University Press has undertaken to publish a significant portion of his work in definitive translation, under the general editorship of Michael W. Jennings. This volume, the first of...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Paperback
    $9900
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • One-Way Street
    One-Way Street is a thoroughfare unlike anything else in literature—by turns exhilarating and bewildering, requiring mental agility and a special kind of urban literacy. Presented here in a new edition with expanded notes, this genre-defying meditation on the semiotics of late-1920s Weimar culture offers a fresh opportunity to encounter Walter Benjamin at his most virtuosic and experimental, writing in a...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Paperback
    $3999
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
    Benjamin's famous Work of Art essay sets out his boldest thoughts on media and on culture in general—in their most realised form—while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay, the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought. This...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Paperback
    $6599
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings
    Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings
    "Every line we succeed in publishing today...is a victory wrested from the powers of darkness." So wrote Walter Benjamin in January 1940. Not long afterward, he himself would fall prey to those powers, a victim of suicide following a failed attempt to flee the Nazis. However insistently the idea of catastrophe hangs over Benjamin's writings in the final years of...
    By Walter Benjamin
    Paperback
    $9300
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks

More from General Fiction

View all
  • The Wedding People
    'BEST READ OF THE YEAR SO FAR' THE TIMES 'BOOKS AS FUN AS THIS ONE ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN' GUARDIAN Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel in Rhode Island wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mistaken for one of the wedding people — but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall...
    By Alison Espach
    Paperback
    $2399
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    (3)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Buy to Win
    Dungeon Crawler Carl
    The apocalypse will be televised! Welcome to the first book in the wildly popular and addictive Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman-now with bonus material exclusive to the print edition! You know what's worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what's worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction...
    By Matt Dinniman
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Pre-order
    Big Little Truths
    Parenting teens is not for the faint of heart but Madeline, Jane and Celeste have been through worse. It's been a decade since the school trivia night that changed their lives forever and now they're living blissfully ordinary suburban lives. But when an anonymous grisly package arrives at the local high school, and a man in a green Volvo is...
    By Liane Moriarty
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    Pre-order
    Out 25 Aug 2026
  • On Sale
    17% off
    Dylan's Pick Dylan's Pick
    Theo of Golden
    THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING PHENOMENON'For anything to be truly good, there must be love in it. Nothing is what it's supposed to be if love is not at the core.' One morning, a stranger arrives in the town of Golden. No one knows who he is or where he came from…His name is Theo and he's arrived there by chance –...
    By Allen Levi
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    (6)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Throne of Glass Box Set (Paperback)
    Enter the realm. Unleash the darkness. Live the legend. Discover the worldwide phenomenon of the #1 New York Times-bestselling Throne of Glass series in this gorgeous 8-book box set! In a land without magic, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She has no love for the vicious king who rules from his throne of glass, but she has not...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Set
    $12400
    Elsewhere:
    $15500
    (6)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    The Ballad of Falling Dragons [Special Deluxe edition]
    The No.1 Sunday Times bestselling sensation When the Moon Hatched continues with the second book in The Moonfall Series, The Ballad of Falling Dragons… Raeve’s thirst for vengeance continues to burn, as does her love for Kaan Vaegor – a staunch beacon from a past she’s yet to face. With Rekk’s blood still fresh on her hands, she learns the...
    By Sarah A. Parker
    Hardback
    $5999
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Goal
    Welcome to Briar U!Get ready for your newest obsession . . . Discover the addictive world of the Off-Campus series from The Queen of Hockey Romance, Elle Kennedy!Read The Goal now for the perfect forced proximity romance! She's good at achieving her goals . . . College senior Sabrina James has her whole future planned out: graduate from college, kick...
    By Elle Kennedy
    Paperback
    $2499
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Buy to Win
    On Sale
    17% off
    Project Hail Mary
    Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, the SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of The Martian, offers a gripping new adventure in hard science fiction. With endorsement from notable figures such as Barack Obama and a slew of five-star reviews, this novel promises a thrilling and intellectually stimulating journey. Ryland Grace, a lone astronaut, finds himself on a...
    By Andy Weir
    Paperback
    $2000
    Elsewhere:
    $2400
    (5)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Buy to Win
    East of Eden
    Set against the backdrop of the fertile Salinas Valley in California, East of Eden is a profound and compelling novel by John Steinbeck, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. This masterful narrative charts the intertwining destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—across multiple generations. Steinbeck's intricate portrayal of human nature and enduring exploration of moral themes...
    By John Steinbeck
    Paperback
    $2499
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Buy to Win
    Carl's Doomsday Scenario
    Join Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat Princess Donut as they fight fantastical creatures and deadly mobs in the second book in the smash-hit Dungeon Crawler Carl series -now with bonus material exclusive to the print edition Now on the third floor, Carl and Donut have to fight harder than ever. They've already proven that a Coast Guard vet and once-and-forever...
    By Matt Dinniman
    Hardback
    $4699
    Elsewhere:
    $6000
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Score
    Welcome to Briar U! Get ready for your newest obsession... Discover the addictive world of the Off-Campus series from The Queen of Hockey Romance, Elle Kennedy! Read The Score now for the perfect friends with benefits romance! He knows how to score, on and off the ice... Allie Hayes is in crisis mode. With graduation looming, she still doesn't have...
    By Elle Kennedy
    Paperback
    $2499
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    On Mystic Lake
    One of the greatest storytellers of our time - Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing Annie Colwater's only child has just left home for school in England. On that same day, her husband of twenty years confesses that he's in love with a younger woman. Left alone in the beautiful California house which was once a home, Annie...
    By Kristin Hannah
    Paperback
    $3100
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships Monday

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.

General Fiction lists from the team

Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!

The Latest at Book Hero

View all