«Jakob von Gunten» in English with a Parallel Translation

Jakob von Gunten is a first-person story told by its titular protagonist, a young man of noble background who runs off from home and decides to spend the rest of his life serving others. To this end, he enrolls at the Benjamenta Institute, a school for servants. Walser based the novel on his own experiences: upon arriving in Berlin in 1905 he attended a school for servants and served as a butler the following winter. One of the translators of the book into English, Christopher Middleton, in the novel’s afterword calls the novel, "an analytic fictional soliloquy'".