“Michael Kohlhaas,” the Book That Made the Novel Modern
Heinrich von Kleist’s life, like much of his work, was brief and dramatic.Photograph from Hulton Archive / Getty“Michael Kohlhaas,” an 1810 novella by the German poet and dramatist Heinrich von Kleist, is a work of almost total calamity. Its speed and cataclysmic force are palpable from the opening paragraph:In the middle of the 16th...