Keller has long been a favorite of mine and is a giant of Swiss (and German-language) literature. (If you want to get a sense of his importance, compare the length of the English Wikipedia entry to the length of the German-language one.] One of the works for which he is best known is a series of novellas called The People from Seldwyla (Die Leute von Seldwyla). Some of those stories were my introduction to him and these are two more from that collection. By now, I imagine I’ve read about half of what has been translated from his prodigious output into English (including his massive, semi-autobiographical 700-page novel, Green Henry (reviewed here a few years ago) and I wish there were more. But I will confess that these two didn’t overwhelm me. The first tells of a mismatched couple and a tragicomedy of errors; the second deals with Mrs. Amrain’s attachment to her youngest son. German realism at its height; the former is much better than the latter but I think he wrote many other better pieces. (An excellent introduction for English-speakers, for those who might be interest, is the Keller volume in “The German Library” published by Continuum—indeed, every volume I have from that series is excellent. It includes half a dozen stories from each of Keller’s most famous collections.) ( )