马丁·瓦尔泽（Martin Walser），1927年生于德国。1957年获黑塞奖，1962年获豪普特曼奖，1980年获席勒奖，1981年获毕希纳奖，1996年获荷尔德林奖。1998年10月再获德国书业和平奖。早期作品如广播剧本《外面》《小规模战争》和小说集《房屋上空一飞机》等受卡夫卡影响，情节离奇。后转向现实主义创作风格，主要作品有《菲利普斯堡的几桩婚烟》《克莱斯特茵三部曲》《爱的彼岸》《无家可归》《心灵的活动》《天鹅别墅》《爱的表白》《喷泉》等长篇小说、十多部剧本及其他体裁的作品。
《梅斯默的想法》问世于1985年，该书由许多出色的微型故事和警句组成，被评论界认为是作者最美的一部散文体小说作品。作者的目的是要写出“自传的第四维”，在暴露自己的同时又掩盖自己。书中的主人公梅斯默无疑就是作者的第二个自我。梅斯默滞留在某大都市的火车站，给一位老友打电话，对方却没有兴趣再与他交谈或会面，从而使他思绪绵绵。本书的情节被淡化到极致，但文中的每一句话都令人深思和回味。
Martin Walser (German: [ˈmaʁ.tiːn ˈvalˌzɐ] (
listen); born 24 March 1927) is a German writer.
Life
Walser was born in Wasserburg am Bodensee, on Lake Constance. His parents were coal merchants, and they also kept an inn next to the train station in Wasserburg. He described the environment in which he grew up in his novel Ein springender Brunnen (English: A Gushing Fountain). From 1938 to 1943 he was a pupil at the secondary school in Lindau and served in an anti-aircraft unit. According to documents released in June 2007, at the age of 17 he became a member of the Nazi Party on 20 April 1944, though Walser denied that he knowingly entered the party, a claim disputed by historian Juliane Wetzel. By the end of the Second World War, he was a soldier in the Wehrmacht. After the war he returned to his studies and completed his Abitur in 1946. He then studied literature, history, and philosophy at the University of Regensburg and the University of Tübingen. He received his doctorate in literature in 1951 for a thesis on Franz Kafka, written under the supervision of Friedrich Beißner.