A Hesitation Before Birth (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Peter Mailloux
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1883-1924
- Setting: Primarily Czechoslovakia; Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France
- Principal Characters: Franz Kafka, Hermann Kafka, Julie Kafka (nee Lowy), Ottla, Max Brod, Felice Bauer, Milena Jesenska, Dora Dymant
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Family or family life, Authors or writers, Jews or Jewish life, Creative process, Allegory, Eastern Europe or eastern Europeans
- Locales: France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia
The first biography of Franz Kafka was written by his close friend Max Brod, who was responsible for the posthumous publication of many of Kafka’s works. Brod’s book appeared in English translation as Franz Kafka: A Biography (1947, 1960). While the critical literature on Kafka continued to grow at an astonishing rate, not until Ronald Hayman’s K: A Biography (1981; published in the United States as Kafka: A Biography, 1982) was there another Kafka biography in English. Hayman’s book was quickly followed by Ernst Pawel’s The Nightmare of Reason: A Life...
[The entire page is 1635 words long]
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