For this week's Hall of Fame, the author Joe Dunthorne presents the writer's writer: Heinrich von Kleist. A contemporary of Goethe, Byron and Shelley he was perhaps even more jaded, world-weary and downright depressed than a whole inkwell of Doomed Romantic poets.
And that, ironically, is what makes him so modern. His stories don't resolve. There are no happy endings. No-one gets their comeuppance. A writer for our times, perhaps? And a writer for Joe too, because in researching Children of Radium he also wasn't in control of the story. If you've not heard his episode yet, find it now. And in the meantime, wallow with us in the modernist romance of Heinrich von Kleist.
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