Kafka - 9780300106312

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is one of the most original, enigmatic and disturbing of the great modern European writers. His dark and compelling works, such as The Trial, The Castle and 'Metamorphosis', have beguiled and unnerved generations of readers.
Kafka's life was as extraordinary as his fictional imaginings: outwardly not marked by incident, it was one of inward torment. All his life he battled against what seemed to him insuperable obstacles: his demanding ideal of art, his poor health, his sense of isolation, his work as a lawyer in a semi-official workers' insurance institute in Prague, his tense and difficult relationship with his father, his complex Jewish heritage, his desperate struggle to create the conditions in which to write, and his equally determined attempts - all frustrated - to marry before illness ended his life at the age of forty.
This new biography, the first for over twenty years, paints a portrait of the man behind those richly imagined and unforgettable works. It re-examines Kafka's long and tortured affair with Felice Bauer, which he eventually abandoned in despair; his equally difficult involvement with the passionate Milena Jesenska; and the eventual happiness of his final months with Dora Diamant. Through a rereading of Kafka's fiction in view of these experiences, Nicholas Murray sheds fresh light on the work of a modern master.