Kafka

by Nicholas Murray

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 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.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Nicholas Murray is an English biographer, poet and journalist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichola...


Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Antes de leer este libro, no entendía mucho las historias y/o libros de Kafka, pero después de saber acerca de su vida, ahora los entiendo totalmente. Nicholas Murray fue muy claro al hablar de la vida de Kafka. Todo es mucho más fácil de entender ahora cuando leo sus libros. Si están buscando una buena biografía, este es el libro correcto. Habla de su vida como escritor, vida personal, amorosa, entre otros. También explica por qué escribe lo que escribe y, lo más importante, el por qué de la manera de escribir lo que escribe.
Perdón por hablar en tiempo presente, pero para mí, el gran Franz Kafka seguirá estando vivo por un buen tiempo más.
¿Recomendado? ¡Absolutamente! Este libro me ayudó mucho a entender a Kafka.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Modern biography of Kafka, by a professional biographer rather than a friend. Lighter and more readable than Brod's, with more context because of the benefit of hindsight, eg lots of stuff about class/cultural divisions in Prague, Jewish life etc, that Brod took for granted. Focused very much on how his relationships with women (and his father) affected his life and work.

See my Kafka-related bookshelf for other works by and about Kafka: HERE.

[iva° · Rating 4 out of 5]

napaćena kafkina duša. napaćeno kafkino tijelo.
ne mogu se oteti dojmu da mu je smrt došla kao oslobođenje: napokon.

vrlo detaljna kafkina biografija koja se temeljno bazira na njegovoj korespondenciji s obitelji, prijateljima i djevojkama/zaručnicama/prijateljicama (od kojih je trima dano posebno mjesto: felici, mileni i dori). uz pomoć kafkinih pisama, murray plete njegovu životnu priču koja se oslanja na dvije okosnice: njegov literarni opus/potrebu za pisanjem i izražavanjem sebe kroz pisanje te kroz njegove tegobe/bolesti (uz vrlo važnu stavku: kafka je, uz sve svoje "stvarne" bolesti bio hipohondar). počevši od njegovog djetinjstva, pa do mladosti (staru/zrelu dob nije ni dočekao, umro je u svojoj 41. godini), kroz ovu knjigu dobit ćeš iscrpan uvid u lik i djelo franza kafke.

svakako pročitaj ako te interesira kafka kao osoba, kao pisac, kao ljubavnik, kao sin, kao brat. kao pacijent, na koncu. i, naravno, za jasniji uvid u njegov literarni opus, da bi saznao iz kojih su se virova rodili "proces", "preobražaj", "dvorac" i ostala njegova djela.

u današnje vrijeme, kafka bi mogao potražiti i naći primjerenu skrb/pomoć za svoju ranjenu dušu i um, ali onda, prije nešto više od sto godina - uglavnom sve što je za sebe činio bilo je da provodi vrijeme u sanatorijima, na svježem zraku, izvodeći gol vježbe kraj prozora, ne nalazivši načina kako da živi u tom svijetu od kojeg se osjećao posve otuđenim i uz ljudski rod s kojim jedva da je nalazio išta zajedničkoga.
tragedija, sve u svemu, u svakom smislu.

[Jim Good · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story of Franz Kafka from birh through death. Appears unhappy in many aspects of his life much though that may be tinted by hthe biographer relying heavily on his letters to his twice engaged andnever married fiancee. Shows the development of his writing techniques and his relationship with his father and how that interplayed with each other. An entertaining read for those interested in Kafka's writings, but may be more interesting as a piece on period courting and dealing with terminal illness.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

An acceptable biography, certainly does not eclipse the bio of Reiner Stach, who gives me clear insight into how Kafka experienced the world and himself.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Franz Kafka spent most of his external life in a closed circuit of activity: at the office, at home in his little room at his parent's apartment, at the spa for various treatments of his ailments (real and imagined), and the occasional attendance at some lecture or literary salon. His life was not much different than ones we lead today: work, home, a movie, struggles with dating and family. He rarely traveled beyond Vienna or Berlin, and seemed to wind up at a spa to treat his poor health. Most of his time was spent at the activity you would expect from one of the 20th Century's greatest writers — writing.

Such a life supported an oeuvre that I periodically return to for literary delight and inspiration, but as the subject of a standard biography, it can be a bit tedious. Nicholas Murray's choice to structure Kafka's life in chapters centered on his conflicted relationships with women, while justifiable by the influence they had on his writing, lends a lot to this tedium. Consider the enormous chapter devoted to Felice Bauer, who was a major figure in Kafka's romantic life and literary output, despite her own disinterest in his stories. Five years of Kafka's short life were spent courting the poor woman, breaking off two engagements, through thousands of pages of angst-ridden self-flagellation. Murray makes some of this interesting through linking Kafka's epistolary confessions and musings to his fiction, highlighting themes and character interactions relevant to the turmoil of his relationship with Bauer. And, to be fair, a significant chunk of the work Kafka is best known for was created during this period of his life. Yet after the first year or so of Kafka's masochism, I looked ahead to see how long this chapter would go on, and despaired to find I had another hundred pages to endure. Still I plowed on.

This biography would have benefitted from a greater emphasis on Kafka's intellectual history, his life of the mind, where he spent so much of his time. Murray does an excellent job situating Kafka in his German Jewish community of turn-of-the-century Prague, and when we follow Kafka to salons where he engages with the political, literary, intellectual, and spiritual fads of his day, the story livens up considerably. And Murray's research into Kafka's personal relationships with friends and lovers is always thoughtful, evenhanded, and sensitive; it is a relief to see Felice Bauer treated as a full individual with interests and preferences of her own, with none of the misogyny past scholarship has thrown at her. Yet the repetition of Kafka's complaints, which I have sympathy for, could have been borne better had there been a better balance with his other interests. What did he love about Kleist? Dostoevsky? Nietzsche? How did they inform his writing craft? His themes? Murray does not ignore these questions — and credit is due to his sensitive exploration of Kafka's conflicted relationship with Judaism — but I kept wanting more. There are volumes of scholarship on these questions, so he should not be expected to exhaust himself with it; yet I would have preferred more engagement than the all-t00-brief summaries he skates over.

If you love Kafka, by all means, read this. But don't stop with just this biography. I won't. My next stop will be Reiner Stach's Kafka: The Early Years.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was about 40% through this one before I finally wore out on endless quotes from K's letters and analyses of his angst, deciding to skip those sections and just concentrate on the "outer" life, dealings with friends and publishers and so on. I ended up just flipping through page after page , occasionally stopping for a reference to a publisher or his health. So I didn't read quite half of the book as a whole. Maybe if it had been subtitled "A Psychoanalytic Life," I would have skipped the book entirely.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a very good biography on one of the greatest literary authors/novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, and probably the best of central Europe's literary product. It reads well and it flows, but it took me almost a year to come back to it and finish reading it. The book covers his relationships with women, his parents, his literary connections. It's not a feel good book, but it is interesting enough to want me to follow it up with reading of one Kafka's original works.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this concise biography, filled with quotes and anecdotes, that makes a life in which not much happens seem rather riveting. Also provides an intriguing background to read Kafka's fiction against.

[Devo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finishing this book makes me feel like I lost an old, brilliant, suffering friend. A tear was shed.

[Bellona Wolff]

I love history & biographies but this is one hard read. I am only 30 pages from the end of this 396 page monstrosity & I warn you now, it is poorly written, filled with grammatical errors, incomplete sentences that lead nowhere, run-ons that lead to dead ends, & the hardest part for me was the constant use of scattered German vocabulary that had nothing to do with the text!

While referencing books, locations, poems, prayers, philosophies, specific translations, etc. in German or Hebrew or Czech make sense in a text like this because Kafa was located in a country that was at war & went from speaking German to Czech; he was also Jewish & learned Hebrew. So in certain places it's more than understandable: he spoke all 3 languages. HOWEVER, Murray merely uses German words to fill up space whenever he can. The translations make no sense & offer nothing to the text. You will spend a lot of the time skipping over dozens upon dozens of German words for flower breeds, sanitarium TYPES (not names but types), types of pains & diagnoses Kafka was experiencing, restaurant types, newspapers, anything Murray thought of at the moment - you will be exhausted by it because you can tell it's out of boredom & not a genuine, real use of the language; it's wasted on useless text throughout.

On top of the issues I've mentioned, the text is long for no reason whatsoever. It's no secret that Kafka had a lifetime of unique love relationships that were riddled with trouble and that his personal life was consumed by his neurotic anxiety, but there is no reason to repeat the same 20 pages over and over. The author has merely reiterated the same trite arguments over and over offering new information only in roughly half of the book.

While seeing Kafka go through one tragic relationship after another is disheartening, it's trivial as Hell to hear the line-by-line account of his letters to lovers, friends, his diary entries - all, I mean ALL on self-hatred & doubt. ALL OF THEM. There's very little to enjoy about this book at all. I was hoping to find out more than his perpetual self-loathing & self-pity. Maybe dig into his friendships & hobbies or his relationships--with anyone but his sister Ottla! But, the book explores none of this except by referring to them through his letters, which address primarily his self-loathing. It's a one-track piece about his depression & mental illness from HIS point of view disguised as an objective work.

The entire book focuses on the following:

1. Kafka wanting to escape the world & sound & his family who are all horrible
2. He wants to find love, but can't stand to be around anyone
3. He works & hates work
4. He seeks medical leave & gets MONTHS upon MONTHS of leave
5. He works & hates work
6. He hates his family but can't leave
7. So He gets MORE medical leave, goes to santariums & finds quick love interests
8. He goes back to work & he tells his love interest to hate him & he's unlovable for YEARS
9. This process repeats
There. I saved you nearly 400 pages of poorly-written heartache!

That is all this book is & it is exhausting. I've read 2 other novels in the time it's taken me to swallow this one. I warn you: it's horrible. The best part of this book is the selection of pictures which are clear & very well chosen. Yes, that is the most juvenile thing I will ever say about a book - the pictures are the best part.

[Quiet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather stable biography of Kafka. As much of Kafka's life was recorded in the letters he wrote to others and were majorly saved, as well as the thick amount of diaries Kafka kept and were preserved after his death, biographer Nicholas Murray keeps his biography of Kafka majorly based solely on the factual, linear progression of these items maintained by Kafka himself, and investigating into the truthfulness of them (and depicting where there may be falsehood/difference) when appropriate.

As far as biographies go this one by Murray seems as strong a biographic that is available for Kafka now, and for that I'm giving it five stars.

But is the book enjoyable? Kafka was a hypochondriac, self-loathing, and unwilling to make decisions about his life. This book is 400 pages of diary entries and letters writting by Kafka where he repeats the same thing over and over and over; "I love literature, but it is killing me---!" or, "I want to marry you--- but I suffer too much and so will you!"

It's a pretty boring life, Kafka's. I read through this as I'm taking an Author Studies course this semester and figured this would help me in reviewing Kafka's texts. But otherwise, I would have shelved this book in the middle, as it is extremely trying on patience and attention.

This 400-page book is broken up into four chapters; the first chapter, 'Prague,' is very enjoyable. Kafka's early life depicts everything to come in the later years, but there are also great details about pre-Czechoslovakia and the various communities, from bohemian to entrepreneurial, that comprised that period. It's enjoyable, and you get all the essential information you need to understand Kafka from that first chapter. His daddy issues, hypochondria, loneliness, self-loathing, masochism, and all of the other self-destructive things he repeatedly refuses to heal, are all there.

But the rest of the book is a repetition of all of this, and it's about 300 pages of repetition. Nothing happens; Kafka gets engaged, and then he breaks it off. But not so easily; hundreds of pages of him saying the same self-flagellating nonsense before it finally ends and another engagement starts.

Boring life. Kafka himself isn't boring, but he's not 400 pages of intrigue. An abbreviated version of this book, finished at 200 pages, would be more approachable. But as is, I'd only tackle this if you're either a Kafka or Biography fan, as this isn't a life that will necessarily inspire anything but ennui.

[Azra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kafkovo biografijo sem brala dva meseca in pol. Zelo mučno jo je namreč brati. Zaradi prepoznavanja sebe v Kafkovih tesnobah in odtujenosti od sveta. In zaradi njegovega trpljenja v malem mračnem svetu, ki si ga je ustvaril znotraj zidov svojega jaza. Vendar to je tudi razlog za vztrajnost pri branju. Trudiš se razumeti večnega dečka iskrivih oči in mu skozi branje njegove biografije ponuditi vsaj trohico razumevanja, ki ga ni bil deležen v svojem kratkem življenju.

Pričakovala sem, da mi bo najtejše prebrati zadnji del, ki govori o njegovi borbi s tuberkulozo in bolečemu predajanju smrti. Kljub vsem telesnim tegobam je Kafka v tem obdobju končno dosegel drobec duševnega miru, ki ga je venomer iskal. Prvič je bil srečno zaljubljen in se prepustil iskreni ljubezni in pozornosti, ki mu jo je nudila Dora Diamant še dolgo po njegovi smrti.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am re-reading this after first reading it some years ago. I had initially found Murray's attributi g Kafka's ill health to psychogenic processes annoying. But reading it again I am finding more about which to be dismayed. The book is highly mean spirited towards Kafka, with far too much remote, rather hostile speculative psycho-analysing of him from Murray. It is particularly shocking to see Murray GASLIGHT Kafka's childhood experiences of abusive behaviour. Murray gaslights Kafka! Extraordinary from a biographer, though not unknown I guess. It is a shame that there are so few biographies about Kafka. Murray's and Pawel's are both unsatisfactory at best and flawed, falling into Freudian psycho analytical fallacy snares.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever cried so hard in my life as I did when I finished this biography.

[Eduardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This biography is very readable & paints a wonderful picture of an enigmatic and interesting writer and thinker. It made me want t re-read The Trail & The Castle.