K: A Biography of Kafka (Phoenix Giants) - Softcover

Hayman, Ronald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857994434 ISBN 13: 9781857994438

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson History, 1996

Synopsis

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About this title

About the Author

Ronald Hayman was educated at St. Paul's and Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he read English. He worked as an actor and director in the theatre before becoming well known as a critic and writer. His many books include Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Nietzsche: A Critical Life.

From Library Journal

Hayman's important biography of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was originally published in Great Britain in 1981. A prolific playwright and biographer (his works include biographies of Thomas Mann, Sylvia Plath, Nietzsche, and Brecht, among others), Hayman presents Kafka as a man tortured by both childhood and adult sorrows. He suffered the early deaths of two siblings and the subsequent indifference of his overwhelmed parents. Perhaps the first truly "modern" writer, Kafka was continually revisiting and reexamining his own lifelong and multifaceted alienation: as a son, as a Jew in an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe, as a would-be husband, and, finally, as an invalid facing a premature death from TB. Hayman joins a long list of Kafka biographers, notably Kafka's friend Max Brod (Franz Kafka: A Biography, Da Capo, 1995. reprint) and Peter Mailloux (A Hesitation Before Birth: The Life of Franz Kafka, 1981). A well-researched yet highly readable portrait of a fascinating figure; recommended for literature collections. Diane Gardner Premo, Rochester P.L., NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson History
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1857994434
• ISBN 13: 9781857994438
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368