A Biography of Kafka [Paperback]

Ronald Hayman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2001

A brilliant portrayal of the tormented, inspired writer who gave us the eerie and paranoid Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle. This classic account of Kafka's life reveals how his unique body of work forces us to reconsider all our traditional assumptions about the divide between fiction and fact--and how Kafka used literature as a means of "putting himself on trial." "...a full biography which any Kafka reader will want to keep."--Observer. "Hayman...brings the jackdaw of Prague sharply to life."--The Times.

Editorial Reviews

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.

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Phoenix Press (December 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842124153
• ISBN-13: 978-1842124154
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,178,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars astounding biography, December 14, 2005

By 

M. Sabine Doiron "vorgefuhl" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Biography of Kafka (Paperback)

This biography is quite simply unlike anything else I have ever read. It is good enough to rank among my favourite fiction novels, because it has an attention to story that I rarely experience in biography. Ronald Hayman achieves this startling effect partly by dropping us into Kafka's story at a crucial point in his artistic career, just after finishing one of his finest stories (Das Urteil), and continuing from there, without a drop in the intensity. We are left to infer most of the technical details of Kafka's life from other sources, or simply from the timeline included before the biography.

I can't tell you how many literary biographies I have read that fail to make this simple step of beginning in the right moment, how many times I have put down a biography because it started out by telling me the story of the figure's father's father. What I am interested in is the core of the writer, the things they could not tell about themselves. Kafka was a man of such self-doubt and anguish that he cannot be expected to tell his own story with enough truth or detail. This book illuminates everything that is compelling about Kafka, the man who devoted himself so completely to literature that there was hardly anything left for the rest of his life, and who deserves nothing less than to have his sad story told so exceptionally.