Synopses & Reviews
In Kafka's writing, Albert Camus tells us, we travel "to the limits of human thought." And in this book, the world's leading Kafka authority conducts us to the deepest reaches of Kafka's own troubled psyche, to reveal the inner workings of the man who gave his name to a central facet of modern experience, the Kafkaesque. Klaus Wagenbach, who wrote the first major critical biography of Kafka, draws upon a wealth of new and recent information to produce a concise but finely nuanced portrait of the author, an ideal introduction to this quintessential figure of modernity.
With extensive reference to Kafka's extraordinary letters and diaries, Wagenbach shows us the author of Metamorphosis and The Trial perpetually caught between the irresistible attractions of the world and his ruthless desire for solitude and isolation. It was this tension, Wagenbach tells us, that gave Kafka's writing its uncanny quality and that haunted his intense, unresolved relationships with women. And it was in this tension that both his misery and mastery inhered, making his one of the most painfully powerful voices of the experience of the twentieth century.
Review
Wonderful...Wagenbach is the doyen of Kafka scholars, and this is easily the best guide to the life and work: succinct, handsomely produced, and endlessly informative. Eric Ormsby
Synopsis
inhered, making his one of the most painfully powerful voices of the experience of the twentieth century.
About the Author
Klaus Wagenbach is a publisher and renowned Kafka expert. He has written six books on Kafka, including Kafka: A Biography of his Youth and Kafka's Prague.
Table of Contents
Introduction by Ritchie Robertson
Fame--too late for the author
The son of a shopkeeper, lost in Prague
What does a boy learn at an Imperial and Royal Secondary School?
University, society and language in the capital of Bohemia
'Description of a Struggle': the insurance official, his job, his plans and his journeys
The only way to write!
Life or literature? Kafka's engagements and The Trial
The wound
A naked man among the clothed
Notes
Map of Prague
Chronology
List of Works
Further Reading
Picture Sources
Index