A closer look at the young Kafka

Kafka: The Early Years. By Reiner Stach. Translated by Shelley Frisch. Princeton University Press; 564 pages; $35.POOR Franz Kafka. His lifetime being misunderstood by his family has been followed by an even longer literary afterlife being misunderstood by the world. According to a new biography by Reiner Stach, Kafka was not the neurotic, world-removed writer of, say, Isaac Bashevis Singer's 1960s story, 'A Friend of Kafka', in which a friend says Kafka's inhibitions 'impeded him in everything'. Nor was he scarred solely by a difficult relationship with his overbearing father, an idea that Alan Bennett's play 'Kafka's Dick' toyed with in the 1980s.In 'Kafka: The Early Years', the last instalment of a mighty, three-volume biography, Mr Stach pursues close description of Kafka's life and times rather than the 'critical biography' approach combining biography and textual interpretation. What Mr Stach uncovers in this volume'written last because of a long struggle over access to documents'are the formative experiences of a Kafka who becomes new and surprisingly...Continue reading
Click here to read full news..