Kafka's Last Love [Hardcover]

Kathi Diamant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2003

In this gripping literary detective story, Kathi Diamant brings to light the amazing woman who captured Kafka's heart and kept his literary flame alive for decades. It was Dora Diamant, an independent spirit who fled her Polish Hasidic family to pursue her Zionist dreams, who persuaded Kafka to leave his parents and live with her in Berlin the year before he died. Although many credit (or blame) her for burning many of his papers, as he had requested, she also held onto many others-papers that the Gestapo confiscated and that have yet to be recovered. Dora's life after Kafka-from her days as a struggling agitprop actress in Berlin to her sojourn in Moscow in the 1930s, from her wartime escape to Great Britain, to her first emotional visit to the new nation of Israel-offers a prism through which we can view the cultural and political history of twentieth-century Europe.Based on original sources and interviews, including never-before-seen material from the Comintern and Gestapo archives and Dora's newly discovered notebook, diary, and letters, Kafka's Last Love illuminates the life of a literary "wife" who, like Véra Nabokov and Nora Joyce, is a remarkable woman in her own right.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Franz Kafka's story is well known, Dora Diamant's is not. She was, as the title states, his last love, and the author (no relation), director of the Kafka Project at San Diego State University, has assiduously tracked the traces of her subjects through personal recollections, private papers and newly opened archives in the former Soviet bloc. Dora (1898- 1952) and Kafka first met at a Baltic resort, and she was instantly captivated by his intelligence and deep sensitivity. Kafka in turn was swept away by the vivacious 25-year-old Polish-born Jew, who had fled her Orthodox family for the broader intellectual currents of Weimar Germany. But Yiddish was her first language and she knew Jewish traditions, and Kafka found her a beacon for the religion his own family had rejected. The author describes at great length the one year the lovers lived together in Berlin, but more interesting is the account of Dora and her larger family history after Kafka's painful death in 1924. Here was a woman intent on keeping Kafka's flame alive, who was forced by war and political upheaval to flee from one country after another. Many relatives died in the Holocaust. Her treasured possessions, Kafka's last diaries, were seized by the Gestapo and have never been found. For 15 years her husband, having served time in Nazi prisons and the Soviet gulag, lived in East Berlin, unaware that Dora and their daughter had survived the war. The remarkable story continues in Moscow, London, San Francisco and Tel Aviv, the far-flung points of dispersal of a family caught in the maelstroms of fascism, communism and the Holocaust. 16 pages of b&w photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Diamant found her life's work after a literature professor asked her if she was related to Dora Diamant, Kafka's last love. Currently the director of the Kafka Project at San Diego State University, Kathi has performed a demanding and heroic act of literary sleuthing to piece together Dora's remarkable story. A bright and intrepid Polish Jewish refugee who fled her Orthodox family, she met Kafka by the Baltic Sea, and it was love at first sight, although Kafka was already gravely ill with the tuberculosis that killed him just a year later. Kathi's captivating account of their brief but intense time together illuminates both Kafka's genius and Dora's joie de vivre, and serves as prelude to the traumas Dora faced after Kafka's death. A Jew and a communist, Dora, along with her husband and daughter, fled Hitler's Germany only to meet with disaster in Moscow. Resilient and resourceful, Dora found sanctuary in England, but she never stopped thinking about Kafka, her one true love, and never stopped mourning the loss of her secret cache of his writings. Confiscated by the Gestapo, they may never be recovered, but Kathi's reclaiming of Dora Diamant's extraordinary spirit has brought many other treasures to light. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (April 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465015506
• ISBN-13: 978-0465015504
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #248,411 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kathi Diamant is an award-winning author, actor, broadcaster and adjunct professor at San Diego State University, where she leads the Kafka Project, the official international search to recover a lost literary treasure, the missing writings of Franz Kafka. Her book, "KAFKA'S LAST LOVE: The Mystery of Dora Diamant," based on two decades of research, has been published in the US and UK, Spain, France, Russia and soon in Chinese and Portuguese (Brazil) translations. "Kafka's Last Love" has been reviewed in more than 60 publications and internet sites, receiving critical acclaim for her original research. KAFKA'S LAST LOVE won the Theodore Geisel Award, the "Best of the Best" in the 2004 San Diego Book Awards. As Director of the Kafka Project at SDSU since 1998, Ms. Diamant has led the international effort to find the last writings of Franz Kafka which were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933. Her research has taken her on extended research projects in England, Germany, Poland, and Israel, and is responsible for recovering original Kafka letters and artifacts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dora Diamant: impressions, September 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Kafka's Last Love (Hardcover)

There are many unknown facets of Kafka's life, and until any existing lost records (taken by the Gestapo, or destroyed by Kafka or Diamant) appear, the mysteries will continue. This book solves one of these mysteries, that of the intensity of Dora's brief (less than a year) relationship with Kafka, which was the defining and long-lasting event of her life. The narrative is quite fascinating, both in its revelations of Kafka, its insight into life as a European Jew in the 1st 1/2 of the 20th century, and in the depth of fixation on Kafka by Dora. Many of her distant relatives survive (apparently not the author) which provides a connection to the present. After Kafka's death, Dora's life was basically one of different intensities and levels of tragedy; a tradition followed by her only child who herself ended in madness and death. A "must read" for Kafkaphiles.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Diamant's diamond., June 11, 2008

By 

Bruce Oksol "oksol" (San Antonio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Kafka's Last Love: The Mystery Of Dora Diamant (Paperback)

Kathi Diamant's "mission to find Dora" began in 1985, fourteen years after she first heard of "Dora Diamant-Kafka" and it would be another eighteen years before publishing the results of her mission to better understand Kafka and the love of his life, a mission she says is not yet complete. The author brings to life the events we passed over quickly in world history. For example, the hyperinflation in Germany after WWI, where Kafka's rent in November 1923 was one half trillion marks, up from 4 million marks just three months earlier; how a letter from Kafka with an 18 billion mark postage stamp was returned for insufficient postage. Diamant retraces the development of the Jewish state and poignantly paints the picture of individuals journeying from Poland to Russia to England to Israel. A most intriguing part of the book is Diamant raising the question of how Dora escaped from the Soviet Union just prior to WWII hinting broadly that Dora may have promised that she could be worth more to the state outside the borders than inside. This is the kind of book you can read in two or three sittings to get the overall picture, and then go back to specific episodes in Diamant's life. The biographer, probably no relation to Dora, does a fine job keeping the reader informed of dates and locations at all times.

As a side note, according to the author's preface, the author "initiated" the Kafka Project at San Diego State University which was instrumental in locating long lost documents and photographs found in German archives in Berlin (1998) and Dora's diary, uncovered in Paris (2000).

I assume that any serious student of Kafka already has this book on her shelf; for those beginning their study of Kafka, there may not be a better place to start.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly enjoyed!!, February 15, 2008

By 

Lorian T (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kafka's Last Love: The Mystery of Dora Diamant (Hardcover)

I was drawn to this book because the author's search for Dora's life story was fascinating and inspiring. I expected an interesting biography, but ended up with a page-turner.

While the story itself has many elements of an intrigue novel (a short and doomed love story, dramatic and tragic death, escapes from the Gestapo, locales in several countries, the mysterious fate of Kafka's documents, missing diaries, and reunited long-lost relatives) the book is actually a meticulously researched biography. So,the big bonus is that "Kafka's Last Love" can be enjoyed for its historical and literary significance, or just because it tells one heck of a good story!!