The Late Walter Benjamin juxtaposes the life and death of the German-Jewish Marxist intellectual Walter Benjamin with the grinding reality of a working-class London council estate in post-war Austerity England. Benjamin’s experience of exile is mirrored by the fate of the 15,000 bombed-out London refugees. Is this heaven or hell?
John Schad is professor of Modern Literature at the University of Lancaster. His books include The Late Walter Benjamin and real-life murder mystery Someone Called Derrida.