Kafka : : The Early Years / / Reiner Stach.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press Complete eBook-Package 2016
• VerfasserIn: Stach, Reiner,
• MitwirkendeR: Frisch, Shelley,
• TeilnehmendeR: Frisch, Shelley.
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2016]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (584 p.) :; 32 b/w illus.

How did Kafka become Kafka? This eagerly anticipated third and final volume of Reiner Stach's definitive biography of the writer answers that question with more facts and insight than ever before, describing the complex personal, political, and cultural circumstances that shaped the young Franz Kafka (1883-1924). It tells the story of the years from his birth in Prague to the beginning of his professional and literary career in 1910, taking the reader up to just before the breakthrough that resulted in his first masterpieces, including "The Metamorphosis." Brimming with vivid and often startling details, Stach's narrative invites readers deep inside this neglected period of Kafka's life. The book's richly atmospheric portrait of his German Jewish merchant family and his education, psychological development, and sexual maturation draws on numerous sources, some still unpublished, including family letters, schoolmates' memoirs, and early diaries of his close friend Max Brod.The biography also provides a colorful panorama of Kafka's wider world, especially the convoluted politics and culture of Prague. Before World War I, Kafka lived in a society at the threshold of modernity but torn by conflict, and Stach provides poignant details of how the adolescent Kafka witnessed violent outbreaks of anti-Semitism and nationalism. The reader also learns how he developed a passionate interest in new technologies, particularly movies and airplanes, and why another interest-his predilection for the back-to-nature movement-stemmed from his "nervous" surroundings rather than personal eccentricity.The crowning volume to a masterly biography, this is an unmatched account of how a boy who grew up in an old Central European monarchy became a writer who helped create modern literature.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Translator's Preface -- Chapter One. Nothing Happening in Prague -- Chapter Two. The Curtain Rises -- Chapter Three. Giants: The Kafkas from Wosek -- Chapter Four. Julie Löwy -- Chapter Five. Losing Propositions -- Chapter Six. Thoughts about Freud -- Chapter Seven. Kafka, Franz: Model Student -- Chapter Eight. A City Energized -- Chapter Nine. Elli, Valli, Ottla -- Chapter Ten. Latin, Bohemian, Mathematics, and Other Matters of the Heart -- Chapter Eleven. Jewish Lessons -- Chapter Twelve. Innocence and Impudence -- Chapter Thirteen. The Path to Freedom -- Chapter Fourteen. To Hell with German Studies -- Chapter Fifteen. Friend Max -- Chapter Sixteen. Enticements -- Chapter Seventeen. Informed Circles: Utitz, Weltsch, Fanta, Bergmann -- Chapter Eighteen. Autonomy and Recovery -- Chapter Nineteen. The Interior Landscape: "Description of a Struggle" -- Chapter Twenty. Doctor of Law Seeking Employment -- Chapter Twenty- One. Off to the Prostitutes -- Chapter Twenty- Two. Cafés, Geishas, Art, and Cinema -- Chapter Twenty- Three. The Formidable Assistant Official -- Chapter Twenty- Four. The Secret Writing School -- Chapter Twenty- Five. Landing in Brescia -- Chapter Twenty- Six. In the Heart of the West -- Chapter Twenty- Seven. Ideas and Spirits: Buber, Steiner, Einstein -- Chapter Twenty-Eight. Literature and Tourism -- Acknowledgments -- Key to Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Photo Credits -- Index