Franz Kafka (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Frederick R. Karl
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1883-1924
- Setting: Primarily Czechoslovakia; briefly, Germany and Austria
- Principal Characters: Franz Kafka, Hermann Kafka, Julie Kafka, Ottla Kafka, Max Brod, Felice Bauer, Milena Jesenska, Dora Dymant
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Culture, Prisoners, Twentieth century, Literature, Fantasy, Intellect, Avant-garde, Czechoslovakia or Czechoslovakians, Modernism
- Locales: Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia
No modern reader needs persuasion that Franz Kafka is one of the “sacred untouchables” of contemporary literature, that along with Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner he ranks among the greatest prose masters of the century. His conversions of his private fantasies of guilt, shame, solitude, and dread into the materials of universally applicable art have succeeded both admirably and appallingly. The world has behaved as mindlessly and madly, cruelly and bafflingly as any image dramatized in his nightmarish fiction. Our time provides a continual exegesis of...
[The entire page is 2500 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
