Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed
A Guide for the Perplexed
1st Edition
Published on 17. June 2010
192 pages
978-1-4411-5576-4 (ISBN)
Description
Franz Kafka is one of the most widely taught, and read, writers in world literature. Readers encountering texts like 'The Metamorphosis' and The Trial for the first time are frequently perplexed by his often intentionally weird writing. Some might say that Kafka's enduring achievement has been to make his readers love being perplexed. As much of Kafka's writing is designed to perplex the reader, this guide helps the reader understand why and how perplexity has been deliberately created by Kafka's text and to realize what the uses of such perplexity might be. The book guides readers through their first encounters with Kafka and introduces the problems involved in reading his texts, the nature of his texts from the key novels and novellas to letters and professional writings, his life as a writer and different approaches to reading Kafka.
Reviews / Votes
'This is a marvellous book, presenting Franz Kafka's life in vivid detail [as much detail as has emerged] and integrating readings of his texts with this living dynamic. Koelb contends that Kafka offers us a "warehouse of writing", with no one kind of text fully autonomous: the fiction, the diaries, the letters, the office writings . . . Kafka himself was of course a convinced modernist -- "I am nothing but literature", he wrote in his diary -- and we have inherited that conviction from his friend and editor, Max Brod. But there is so much to be gained from a post-modernist weaving of fiction into life. Even as he deftly annotates some of the famous stories and never-completed novels, Koelb is happy to leave macro-thinking to new and excited readers. Only if they are Perplexed is he offering a Guide. And yet: no one should miss the inspired single-page analysis of "A Country Doctor."More details
Series
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
ISBN-13
978-1-4411-5576-4 (9781441155764)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
08/2010
Continuum Publishing Corporation
€136.80
Shipment within 15-20 days
Book
08/2010
Continuum Publishing Corporation
€47.27
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Clayton Koelb is the Guy B. Johnson Professor of German and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA.
Content
1. Why You Might Be Perplexed
2. A Short Life of Franz K.
3. A Survey of Kafka's Literary Estate
4. The Stories and Fragments
5. The Novels
Bibliography: Suggested Further Reading
Index
2. A Short Life of Franz K.
3. A Survey of Kafka's Literary Estate
4. The Stories and Fragments
5. The Novels
Bibliography: Suggested Further Reading
Index
