In the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse and mounting political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic and public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of the Selected Writings is now available in paperback in two parts.

In Part 1, Benjamin is represented by two of his greatest literary essays, "Surrealism" and "On the Image of Proust," as well as by a long article on Goethe and a generous selection of his wide-ranging commentary for Weimar Germany's newspapers.

Part 2 contains, in addition to the important longer essays, "Franz Kafka," "Karl Kraus," and "The Author as Producer," the extended autobiographical meditation "A Berlin Chronicle," and extended discussions of the history of photography and the social situation of the French writer, previously untranslated shorter pieces on such subjects as language and memory, theological criticism and literary history, astrology and the newspaper, and on such influential figures as Paul Valery, Stefan George, Hitler, and Mickey Mouse.

在魏玛共和国狂热的最后几年里，在经济崩溃和日益严重的政治灾难中，瓦尔特-本雅明成为德语世界中最具原创性的执业文学评论家和公共知识分子。文选》第二卷现在有平装本，分为两部分。

在第一部分中，本雅明的代表作是他最伟大的两篇文学论文《超现实主义》和《论普鲁斯特的形象》，以及一篇关于歌德的长文和他为魏玛德国的报纸撰写的内容广泛的评论文章。

第二部分除了重要的长篇论文《弗朗茨-卡夫卡》、《卡尔-克劳斯》和《作为制片人的作者》、长篇自传式冥想《柏林纪事》，以及对摄影史和法国作家的社会状况的详细讨论外，还包括以前未翻译的关于语言和记忆、神学批评和文学史、占星术和报纸等主题的短文，以及关于保罗-瓦莱里、斯特凡-乔治、希特勒和米老鼠等有影响力的人物的文章。