This gripping biography of the great Czech novelist, diarist
and short story writer chronicles Kafka''s entire if tragically
curtailed life 1883-1924, but it focuses upon the writer''s
relationship to his father and his inheritance as a member of the
Jewish mercantile bourgeoisie in Prague. Born into a
German-speaking Jewish family, Kafka was a subject of the
Austro-Hungarian empire until 1919 yet through his work he is one
of the most modern of writers. While previous works have
concentrated on Kafka and his women, Nicholas Murray will
concentrate on his extraordinary relationship with his father which
found its most eloquent literary expression in the story ''The
Judgement'' written in 1912 when Kafka was twenty-nine:in a reverse
Oedipal move, the father condemns his son to death by drowning.
This work is essential for an understanding of the intensely
private and complex Kafka and the kind of writer he turned out to
be - the creator in THE CASTLE, THE TRIAL and METAMORPHOSIS the
dazzling short story whose hero wakes up to find himself
transformed into a giant insect of some of the defining literature
of the 20th century.