The Glory of Life - Books by and about Kafka

Doctor, let me die …...

Doctor, let me die …

During the winter of 1916 to 1917, in the midst of World War I, Kafka spent a few quiet months at 22 Golden Lane in Prague. By the light of a paraffin lamp, he put the surreal vision of A Country Doctor to paper. The only sound was the scratching of his pen as he wrote the story of an anxious doctor visiting a terminally ill patient on a dark winter’s night. The fourteen remarkable short stories collected in this volume are among Kafka’s most beautiful and disturbing creations. This edition reproduces them in their original versions and explains the history of their composition. 

Franz Kafka not only wrote prose, he was also passionate about drawing: ‘I was once a great draughtsman, you know,’...

Franz Kafka not only wrote prose, he was also passionate about drawing: ‘I was once a great draughtsman, you know,’ he wrote about his artistic ambitions, half ironic, half proud, to his fiancée Felice Bauer in 1913. Drawing had at one time ‘satisfied him more than anything else’. So what could be more appropriate than to honour him on his anniversary with a comic biography? By no other than Nicolas Mahler, whose drawing style is similarly minimalist.

In his inimitably witty and pointed manner, Mahler portrays Kafka’s life and work and does not shy away from the big questions: Why did Kafka’s plan to write a series of cheap travel guides fail? Who wrote the sequel to one of his most important works, The Re-Metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa? And what was the ‘white slave’ all about? The answers to these questions and much more besides can be found in Completely Kafka.

‘Franz Kafka was Prague and Prague was Franz Kafka,’ Johannes Urzidil once wrote. And indeed, following the traces of Kafka’s...

‘Franz Kafka was Prague and Prague was Franz Kafka,’ Johannes Urzidil once wrote. And indeed, following the traces of Kafka’s life, your way leads right into the heart of the old royal seat on the river Vltava. With every fibre of his being, the author was deeply rooted in the soil of Prague – the city and its people shine through in all his works. This literary guidebook teaches us to see Prague the way Kafka saw it and, through many reprints and editions, it has become a classic. Bursting with more than 150 historic illustrations and constantly updated, over the years it has gained an undisputed status as the guide for everyone who wants to follow in the footsteps of the Prague writer Franz Kafka through the Golden City at the turn of the twentieth century.

‘As Harald Salfellner begins to tell this story, an incredible wealth of political and cultural history and quotations from Kafka’s works opens up.’ Deutsche Welle

Everything you need to know about the great writer and his unique body of work.‘If we want to know what...

Everything you need to know about the great writer and his unique body of work.‘If we want to know what literature truly is and what it is truly capable of, few authors can give us as magnificent a demonstration as Kafka; the play of simultaneously offering up and withholding meaning teaches us that this is a structural feature of the world we inhabit.’People who never find their way, who turn into beetles, who try in vain to gain entry to the law, a bureaucratic apparatus, a village – these are Franz Kafka’s heroes. Their world seems dark and unintelligible, their author strange and difficult. So goes the Kafka myth.But literary scholar Oliver Jahraus presents Kafka above all as a modern author and master storyteller: his work offers a critique of family and social life in modernity, a profound interrogation of gender relations, power and his own Jewish identity. A remarkable oeuvre without parallel in world literature.This book makes a fantastic gift for anyone who loves literature and Kafka’s writings, and would like to know more about this extraordinary author’s life and work.- Intelligent and rigorously researched: the series Reclam 100 Seiten offers facts and knowledge in compact form for inquisitive readers and fans- Entertaining and informative: with lots of illustrations and infographics

Franz Kafka is the most influential writer of the twentieth century. His works are regarded as the epitome of the...

Franz Kafka is the most influential writer of the twentieth century. His works are regarded as the epitome of the dark, the ambiguous and the fascinatingly uncanny. Peter-André Alt’s landmark biography situates Kafka’s life and literary works within the context of major cultural trends during the period 1880–1920. Kafka emerges as an observant flaneur and wistful loner, an anxious ascetic and passionate romantic, an ecstatic and sceptic, a specialist in terror and master of irony.Alt combines biography with illuminating interpretations of Kafka’s works that probe into their psychological depths. He shows how Kafka was engaged in dialogue with Prague’s Germanophone literature and European modernism, with psychoanalysis and Zionism, with philosophy and the Jewish intellectual tradition, with contemporary cinema and theatre. This acclaimed biography explores the experiences, visions and fantasies of a writer in whose inner world the great conflicts of the twentieth century were inscribed. Readers will gain a fresh understanding of Kafka’s artistic individuality by appreciating its unique position between Jewish myth and European modernity – the inheritance of an eternal son who saw himself as being at the beginning and end of all traditions.

Reiner Stach’s award-winning biography of Franz Kafka offers a colourful, narratively rich panorama of the Prague author’s life and a...

Reiner Stach’s award-winning biography of Franz Kafka offers a colourful, narratively rich panorama of the Prague author’s life and a perceptive study of an extraordinary man and artist. The three-volume biography is the product of eighteen years’ work. It traces Kafka’s life from ‘The Early Years’ to ‘The Decisive Years’ and, in the final volume, ‘The Years of Insight’ . It has already earned an international reputation as a definitive work that explores new possibilities for literary biography. ‘Stach’s biography of Kafka is the masterpiece of a gifted writer, who shares minutely detailed observations in a light, lively style without vanity.’ Manfred Schneider, Neue Zürcher Zeitung‘The pinnacle of what is possible in this genre. A novel in its own right.’ Imre Kertész 

He is considered the great sufferer of modern literature, a brooding existential author. But that is just one side of...

He is considered the great sufferer of modern literature, a brooding existential author. But that is just one side of Franz Kafka; few know that he was struck by legendary fits of laughter, loved slapstick and integrated many comedic elements in his texts. His friend Max Brod reported how Kafka had laughed so hard while reading the first chapter of The Trial aloud that ‘he couldn’t carry on reading at times’, ‘indeed, he liked to laugh and did so lustily and knew how to make his friends laugh too’.

It is high time then to honour Kafka’s funny side. And who better to do that than Nicolas Mahler? In his selection from the works, diaries and letters of Franz Kafka, furnished with numerous illustrations, the influential writer proves himself to be an incredibly witty observer and ruthless mocker who doesn’t shy away from giving unsolicited advice either: ‘My last advice in this matter remains as always: get out of Vienna.’

‘I have no literary interests, but am made of literature, am nothing else and cannot be anything else,’ Franz Kafka...

‘I have no literary interests, but am made of literature, am nothing else and cannot be anything else,’ Franz Kafka wrote to his fiancée Felice Bauer. Writing was his life. It meant more to him than a completed work. Rüdiger Safranski observes Kafka in the act of writing, so as to get closer to the secrets of his texts. In Kafka’s letters, he reads about moments of happiness that the Prague author experienced at his desk and moments when the world seemed wholly alien to him. If Kafka’s books are read as testaments to liminal experiences of these sorts, we will discover an utmost immediacy in their mysteries and be transported right to the heart of one of the greatest bodies of work in world literature.

When he fled Prague on the last train in 1939, bound for Palestine, Max Brod took the most famous suitcase...

When he fled Prague on the last train in 1939, bound for Palestine, Max Brod took the most famous suitcase in literary history with him. By doing so, he saved the manuscripts, notes and drawings of his friend Franz Kafka. Decades later, these became the subject of a courtroom drama. On the surface, the case was about what to do with Max Brod’s estate. But the real questions were: was Kafka primarily a Jewish author? Who was the right custodian for his work: Israel, or the country that exterminated Kafka’s family? As gripping and vivid as any legal thriller, Benjamin Balint’s book tells the story of Kafka’s legacy. 

Franz Kafka is rightly regarded as one of the most important authors of modernity. His writings deal in unique fashion...

Franz Kafka is rightly regarded as one of the most important authors of modernity. His writings deal in unique fashion with the anonymous authorities and existential homelessness that characterise modern life. His narrative style is without parallel in literary history, deftly interweaving elements of fact and fantasy, reality and dream, fable and film to render the familiar unfamiliar and capture the horrors of the twentieth century.This book offers a representative selection of Kafka’s writings, including the most important short stories, excerpts from his novels, rarely published drafts and selected aphorisms. The introductory essay provides a helpful guide to interpretations of Kafka’s work and the history of its influence, with particular reference to his diaries and letters.

When Franz Kafka died 100 years ago, the world was a different place. But his novels, parables, diaries and inimitable...

When Franz Kafka died 100 years ago, the world was a different place. But his novels, parables, diaries and inimitable letters are no less original, perturbing, poignant and consoling in the twenty-first century than they ever were. Quite the contrary. As this book shows, his works, life and worldview have a lot to tell us about ourselves and the world we live in, and Kafka remains a fixed point in the modern cosmos for those writing today.Twenty-seven international authors, visual artists, thinkers and poets write about the timeless and urgently topical aspects that they see in the works of this Jewish, German-speaking author from Prague.

A surveyor known as K. arrives at a quiet village in the dead of winter. His destination is the castle,...

A surveyor known as K. arrives at a quiet village in the dead of winter. His destination is the castle, which is so close and yet impossible to get inside. K. strays deeper and deeper into the castle’s labyrinthine bureaucracy and the village’s opaque mesh of relationships. The further he goes, the more dubious his motives and those of the villagers become. The Castle was Kafka’s final novel. An enigmatic tale of the uncertainty and insecurity of the individual in an increasingly unfathomable world. – Includes a short biography of the author.

KAFKA’S NEWLY DISCOVERED DRAWINGS IN A UNIQUE SPECIAL EDITIONFranz Kafka was a prolific drawer, especially when he was younger. But...

KAFKA’S NEWLY DISCOVERED DRAWINGS IN A UNIQUE SPECIAL EDITIONFranz Kafka was a prolific drawer, especially when he was younger. But after his death, he ordered that his drawings be destroyed along with his unpublished writings. Although his friend Max Brod managed to save many of them, the majority of Kafka’s drawings remained hidden away for decades. In this book, they are published in full for the first time, revealing a second Kafka alongside the great author.Kafka’s talent for drawing could only truly be appreciated after many of his surviving drawings were rediscovered in 2019, including dozens of loose sheets and a complete sketchbook. The figures Kafka captured on these pages, often with just a few deft strokes, are fragile, unsettled, fascinatingly enigmatic. Kafka’s drawings range from the realistic to the fantastical, the grotesque, sometimes even the uncanny. Some are carnivalesque or exaggerated caricatures. Together they reveal an artist who seems to bear some relation to Kafka the writer, yet has taken his own distinct path. 

Who was Franz Kafka? Thanks to Michael Kumpfmüller, we can imagine the world-famous writer as a happy man who found...

Who was Franz Kafka? Thanks to Michael Kumpfmüller, we can imagine the world-famous writer as a happy man who found great love towards the end of his life. A smart, sensitive novel about love and fulfilment and the value of every single day we spend attending to the world around us. 

Franz Kafka’s (1883–1924) unfinished novel The Trial is now available for the first time in a comprehensive reader’s edition. Besides...

Franz Kafka’s (1883–1924) unfinished novel The Trial is now available for the first time in a comprehensive reader’s edition. Besides the already-familiar text that has been published many times before, it also includes passages deleted by Kafka. The Vitalis edition thus offers more text than any previous reader’s version based on the critical edition and marks a milestone in the history of Kafka publishing.