Kafka

This is one title in a series of short, illustrated biographies suitab le fortudents and the general reader. They tell the stories of those who havehaped our present and our past, from Beethoven to Dietrich, and frominstein to Churchill. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) gave his name to a centralacet of modern experience - the "Kafkaesque" - and created some of the mostemorable images in 20th-century literature. This biography quotesxtensively from Kafka's letters and diaries to dig deep into his troubledsyche. The author of "Metamorphosis" and "The Trial" is best understood, itrgues, in terms of an inner tension between the attractions of the world andis ruthless desire for solitude and isolation. It was this tension that gaveis writing its uncanny quality and that haunted his intense, unresolvedelationships with women. The result was writing which, according to Albertamus, takes us "to the limits of human thought".