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Reiner Stach's acclaimed and definitive three-volume biography of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is an extraordinary portrait of the writer and a startlingly original contribution to the art of literary biography. Stach's great achievement is to place the literary work into a biographical context that emphasizes the complex interplay of memory, experience and symbolism in the writing. As he puts it, Kafka was constantly "zigzagging between word and world."
The biography is divided as follows (in chronological order):
THE EARLY YEARS (2014) covers the period 1883-1910, describing the complex personal, political, and cultural circumstances that shaped the young Kafka. It tells the story of the years from his birth in Prague to the beginning of his professional and literary career in 1910, taking the reader up to just before the breakthrough that resulted in his first masterpieces. Brimming with vivid and often startling details, Stach's narrative invites readers deep inside this neglected period of Kafka's life. The book's richly atmospheric portrait of his German Jewish merchant family and his education, psychological development, and sexual maturation draws on numerous sources, some still unpublished, including family letters, schoolmates' memoirs, and early diaries of his close friend Max Brod.
THE DECISIVE YEARS (2002) covers the years 1910-1915, the most important and best-documented period of Kafka's life. To re-create the atmosphere in which Kafka lived and worked during that period, Stach spent more than a decade working with over four thousand pages of journals, letters, and literary fragments, many never before available. This period, which would prove crucial to Kafka's writing and set the course for the rest of his life, saw him working with astonishing intensity on his most seminal writings: "The Trial", "The Metamorphosis", "The Man Who Disappeared" (Amerika), and "The Judgment". These are also the years of Kafka's fascination with Zionism, of his tumultuous engagement to Felice Bauer, and of the outbreak of World War I.
THE YEARS OF INSIGHT (2008) tells the story of Kafka's final years, from 1916 to his death in 1924. During this time, he was spared military service at the front, yet his work as a civil servant brought him into chilling proximity with its grim realities. He was witness to unspeakable misery, lost the financial security he had been counting on to lead the life of a writer, and remained captive for years in his hometown of Prague. The outbreak of tuberculosis and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire constituted a double shock for Kafka, and made him agonizingly aware of his increasing rootlessness. He began to pose broader existential questions, and his writing grew terser and more reflective, from the parable-like "Country Doctor" stories and "A Hunger Artist" to "The Castle", in which he once again sought "the strange, mysterious, possibly dangerous, possibly redemptive comfort of writing."
Also included here is Stach's IS THAT KAFKA? (2012). In the course of compiling his biography, Stach made one astounding discovery after another: unexpected photographs, inconsistencies in handwritten texts, excerpts from letters, and testimonies from Kafka's contemporaries that shed surprising light on his personality and his writing. Here the biographer assembles 99 of his most exciting discoveries, culling the choicest, most entertaining bits, and adding his knowledgeable commentaries.
The following books are in PDF or ePUB format as indicated:
* Is That Kafka? 99 Finds (New Directions, 2016). Translated by Kurt Beals. -- ePUB
* Kafka: The Early Years (Princeton UP, 2016). Translated by Shelley Frisch. -- ePUB
* Kafka: The Decisive Years (Harcourt, 2002). Translated by Shelley Frisch. -- PDF
* Kafka: The Years of Insight (Princeton UP, 2013). Translated by Shelley Frisch. -- PDF
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Stach, Reiner
Is That Kafka
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Stach, Reiner - Is That Kafka (New Directions, 2016).epub (6.7 MB)
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Stach, Reiner - Is That Kafka (New Directions, 2016).jpg (61.5 KB)
Kafka_ The Decisive Years
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Stach, Reiner - Kafka_ The Decisive Years (Harcourt, 2005).jpg (74.8 KB)
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Stach, Reiner - Kafka_ The Decisive Years (Harcourt, 2005).pdf (13.1 MB)
Kafka_ The Early Years
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Stach, Reiner - Kafka_ The Early Years (Princeton, 2016).epub (7.1 MB)
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Stach, Reiner - Kafka_ The Early Years (Princeton, 2016).jpg (77.6 KB)
Kafka_ The Years of Insight
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Stach, Reiner - Kafka_ The Years of Insight (Princeton, 2013).jpg (287.1 KB)
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Stach, Reiner - Kafka_ The Years of Insight (Princeton, 2013).pdf (17.3 MB)
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