Walter Benjamin is considered one of the most characteristic and simultaneously unique figures of the interwar period. His work, which spans from literary theory to philosophy and cultural criticism, reflects the major theoretical and political disputes of the era.

During the period 1934-1940, from which the essays included in this volume derive, the conflict with National Socialism and its intellectual offshoots looms large. Exiled in Paris, Benjamin undertakes a peculiar synthesis of traditions from Jewish mysticism, German romanticism, Marxism, neo-Kantianism, and critical theory.

However, the unity of his work cannot be reduced to any of these poles, even if one "searches for the butterfly in the net upon which it casts its shadow as it flutters back and forth." This volume gathers many of the most significant texts from the last period of his life: essays on Kafka, Baudelaire, and French writers, Nikolai Leskov, the poetry and epic theater of Brecht, Edward Fuchs, painting and photography, sociolinguistics, the landmark essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility," his positions on the concept of History, and more.