Kafka / Nicholas Murray.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murray, Nicholas.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924.

Kafka, Franz.

Novelists, Austrian--20th century--Biography.

Novelists, Austrian.

Genre:

Biographies.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copies 1 & 2)

Physical Description:

440 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, 2004.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Prague

Felice

Milena

Dora.

Notes:

"First published in 2004 in Great Britain by Little, Brown"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [390]-418) and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copies 1 & 2 has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

0300106319

OCLC:

56351745