Kafka: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

by RitchieRobertson (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  2004

  $10.83

  'When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect ...' So begins Franz Kafka's most famous story Metamorphosis. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is among the most intriguing and influential writers of the twentieth century. During his lifetime he worked as a civil servant and published only a handful of short stories, the best known being The Transformation. All three of his novels, The Trial, The Castle, and The Man Who Disappeared [America], were published after his death and helped to found Kafka's reputation as a uniquely perceptive interpreter of the twentieth century. Kafka's fiction vividly evokes bizarre situations: a commercial traveller is turned into an insect, a banker is arrested by a mysterious court, a fasting artist starves to death in the name of art, a singing mouse becomes the heroine of her nation. Attending both to Kafka's crisis-ridden life and to the subtleties of his art, Ritchie Robertson shows how his work explores such characteristically modern themes as the place of the body in culture, the power of institutions over people, and the possibility of religion after Nietzsche had proclaimed 'the death of God'. The result is an up-to-date and accessible portrait of a fascinating author which shows us ways to read and make sense of his perplexing and absorbing work. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $5.43

  Franz Kafka died almost unacknowledged but he is now recognised as one of the greatest authors of the 20th century and the creator of some of modern literature's most unsettling and memorable images. As this biography shows, this world was very much Kafka's own: his personal life was as complicated and troubled as anything in his books. Klaus Wagenbach offers an acute portrait of a mind torn between the attractions of the world, including a series of intense relationships with women, and his desire for solitude. The result was writing, which, according to Albert Camus, takes us to the limits of human thought.