Select A Store
Select Store
My Store:
Select A Store
Overview
Overview
Although Franz Kafka (1883-1924) completed only a small number of works in his lifetime, perhaps no other author has had a greater influence on twentieth-century consciousness. This engrossing biography of the Czech novelist and short-story writer emphasizes the cultural and historical contexts of his fiction and focuses for the first time on his complex relationship with his father.
Nicholas Murray paints a picture of Kafka's German-speaking Jewish family and the Prague mercantile bourgeoisie to which they belonged. He describes Kafka's demanding professional career, his ill health, and the constantly receding prospects of a marriage he craved. He analyzes Kafka's poor relationship with his father, Hermann, which found its most eloquent expression in Kafka's story "The Judgement," about a father who condemns his son to death by drowning. And he asserts that the unsettling flavor of Kafka's books--stories suffused with guilt and frustration--derives from his sense of living in a mysteriously antagonistic world, of being a criminal without having knowingly committed a crime.
Compelling and empathetic, this book sheds new light on a man of unique genius and on his enigmatic works.
- Format: Hardcover
- Author: Murray, Nicholas
- ISBN: 9780300106312
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 9.32 x 1.35
- Number Of Pages: 440
- Publication Year: 2004