Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts

Download Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9788024629926
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (299 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts by : Marek Nekula

Download or read book Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts written by Marek Nekula and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franz Kafka is by far the Prague author most widely read and admired internationally. However, his reception in Czechoslovakia, launched by the Liblice conference in 1963, has been conflicted. While rescuing Kafka from years of censorship and neglect, Czech critics of the 1960s "overwrote" his German and Jewish literary and cultural contexts in order to focus on his Czech cultural connections. Seeking to rediscover Kafka's multiple backgrounds, in 'Franz Kafka and His Prague contexts' Marek Nekula focuses on Kafka's Jewish social and literary networks in Prague, his German and Czech bilingualism, and his knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew. Kafka's bilingualism is discussed in the context of contemporary essentialist views of a writer's "organic" language and identity. Nekula also pays particular attention to Kafka's education, examining his studies of Czech language and literature as well as its role in his intellectual life. The book concludes by asking how Kafka "read" his urban environment, looking at the readings of Prague encoded in his fictional and non-fictional texts.

Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts

Download Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789654937894
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (378 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts by : Marek Nekula

Download or read book Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts written by Marek Nekula and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franz Kafka is by far the Prague author most widely read and admired internationally. However, his reception in Czechoslovakia, launched by the Liblice conference in 1963, has been conflicted. While rescuing Kafka from years of censorship and neglect, Czech critics of the 1960s "overwrote" his German and Jewish literary and cultural contexts in order to focus on his Czech cultural connections. Seeking to rediscover Kafka's multiple backgrounds, in 'Franz Kafka and His Prague contexts' Marek Nekula focuses on Kafka's Jewish social and literary networks in Prague, his German and Czech bilingualism, and his knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew. Kafka's bilingualism is discussed in the context of contemporary essentialist views of a writer's "organic" language and identity. Nekula also pays particular attention to Kafka's education, examining his studies of Czech language and literature as well as its role in his intellectual life. The book concludes by asking how Kafka "read" his urban environment, looking at the readings of Prague encoded in his fictional and non-fictional texts.

Franz Kafka and his Prague Contexts

Download Franz Kafka and his Prague Contexts PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press
ISBN 13 : 8024629356
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (246 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Franz Kafka and his Prague Contexts by : Nekula, Marek

Download or read book Franz Kafka and his Prague Contexts written by Nekula, Marek and published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franz Kafka is by far the Prague author most widely read and admired internationally. However, his reception in Czechoslovakia, launched by the Liblice conference in 1963, has been conflicted. While rescuing Kafka from years of censorship and neglect, Czech critics of the 1960s “overwrote” his German and Jewish literary and cultural contexts in order to focus on his Czech cultural connections. Seeking to rediscover Kafka’s multiple backgrounds, in Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts Marek Nekula focuses on Kafka’s Jewish social and literary networks in Prague, his German and Czech bilingualism, and his knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew. Kafka’s bilingualism is discussed in the context of contemporary essentialist views of a writer’s organic language and identity. Nekula also pays particular attention to Kafka’s education, examining his studies of Czech language and literature as well as its role in his intellectual life. The book concludes by asking how Kafka read his urban environment, looking at the readings of Prague encoded in his fictional and nonfictional texts. ‘Nekula’s work has had a major impact on our understanding of Kafka’s relation to the complex social, cultural and linguistic environment of early twentieth‑century Prague. While little of this work has been available in English until now, the present volume translates many of his most important studies, and includes revisions and expansions appearing now for the first time. Nekula challenges stubborn clichés and opens important new perspectives: readers interested in questions relating to Kafka and Prague will find this an essential and richly rewarding book.’ – Peter Zusi, University College London ‘Marek Nekula’s important book originally situates Franz Kafka within his Pragueand Czech contexts. It critically examines numerous distortions that accompanied the reception of Kafka, starting with the central issue of Kafka’s languages(Kafka’s Czech, Prague German), and the ideological discourse surrounding the author in communist Czechoslovakia. Astute and carefully argued, Franz Kafka and his Prague Contexts offers new perspectives on the writings of the Prague author. This book will benefit readers in German and Slavic Studies, in Comparative Literature, and History of Ideas.’ – Veronika Tuckerová, Harvard University Marek Nekula připravil soubor studií o tom, jak Praha formovala Kafkovu osobnost a dílo. Kniha začíná kritickou diskuzí o problematickém přijímání Franze Kafky v Československu, které začalo na konferenci v Liblici v roce 1963. Zde byl Kafka zachráněn před cenzurou za cenu "přepsání" jeho německého a židovského literárního a kulturního kontextu s cílem vyzdvihnout český vliv na jeho tvorbu. Studie se zaměřují na židovské sociální a literární prostředí v Praze, Kafkovu německo-českou dvojjazyčnost a jeho znalost jidiš a hebrejštiny. Kafkův bilingvismus je probírán v kontextu současných esencialistických názorů na spisovatelův jazyk a identitu. Nekula také věnuje zvláštní pozornost Kafkovu vzdělání, zkoumá jeho studia českého jazyka a literatury, jakož i jeho českou četbu a její roli v jeho intelektuálním životě. Knihu uzavírá otázkou, jak Kafka „četl“ své městské prostředí.

Franz Kafka in Context

Download Franz Kafka in Context PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107085497
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Franz Kafka in Context by : Carolin Duttlinger

Download or read book Franz Kafka in Context written by Carolin Duttlinger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accessible essays place Kafka in historical, political and cultural context, providing new and often unexpected perspectives on his works.

Prague Territories

Download Prague Territories PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520236920
Total Pages : 367 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Prague Territories by : Scott Spector

Download or read book Prague Territories written by Scott Spector and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cultural history maps the "territories" carved out by German-Jewish artists and intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the 20th century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished.

Franz Kafka and Prague. (Transl. from the German by Lowry Nelson and Rene Wellek.)

Download Franz Kafka and Prague. (Transl. from the German by Lowry Nelson and Rene Wellek.) PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 128 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Franz Kafka and Prague. (Transl. from the German by Lowry Nelson and Rene Wellek.) by : Pavel Eisner

Download or read book Franz Kafka and Prague. (Transl. from the German by Lowry Nelson and Rene Wellek.) written by Pavel Eisner and published by . This book was released on 1950 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Golden griffin books, 1).

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Download The Metamorphosis and Other Stories PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Broadview Press
ISBN 13 : 1554812240
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (548 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by : Franz Kafka

Download or read book The Metamorphosis and Other Stories written by Franz Kafka and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A man awakens to find himself transformed into a giant vermin; a performer starves himself to death as a circus attraction; a fiendish engine of capital punishment engraves the letter of the law into the body of the condemned. Such are the nightmare scenarios that emerge in the short stories of Franz Kafka, one of the twentieth century’s most formative, mystifying literary figures. Though immediate in their impact, Kafka’s stories invite endless angles of interpretation, from Freudian psychology and existentialist philosophy to animal studies. This volume presents “The Metamorphosis”—together with several other of Kafka’s best and best-known stories—in a nuanced, clear, and powerful translation by Ian Johnston. The appendices provide philosophical, literary, and cultural context, as well as valuable selections from Kafka’s own letters and drawings.

Looking at Kafka

Download Looking at Kafka PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789519371733
Total Pages : 39 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (717 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Looking at Kafka by : Philip Roth

Download or read book Looking at Kafka written by Philip Roth and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Kafka's Selected Stories

Download Kafka's Selected Stories PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : W W Norton & Company Incorporated
ISBN 13 : 9780393924794
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (247 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Kafka's Selected Stories by : Franz Kafka

Download or read book Kafka's Selected Stories written by Franz Kafka and published by W W Norton & Company Incorporated. This book was released on 2007 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on translations by leading Kafka scholar, this work includes twenty-nine stories, which accompanies annotations. The extracts from his letters, diaries and conversations offer a glimpse of Kafka's creative process. It covers ten essays on the major stories from a range of voices.

Kafka’s Other Prague

Download Kafka’s Other Prague PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
ISBN 13 : 0810137224
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (11 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Kafka’s Other Prague by : Anne Jamison

Download or read book Kafka’s Other Prague written by Anne Jamison and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kafka’s Other Prague: Writings from the Czechoslovak Republic examines Kafka’s late writings from the perspective of the author’s changing relationship with Czech language, culture, and literature—the least understood facet of his meticulously researched life and work. Franz Kafka was born in Prague, a bilingual city in the Habsburg Empire. He died a citizen of Czechoslovakia. Yet Kafka was not Czech in any way he himself would have understood. He could speak Czech, but, like many Prague Jews, he was raised and educated and wrote in German. Kafka critics to date have had little to say about the majority language of his native city or its “minor literature,” as he referred to it in a 1913 journal entry. Kafka’s Other Prague explains why Kafka’s later experience of Czech language and culture matters. Bringing to light newly available archival material, Anne Jamison’s innovative study demonstrates how Czechoslovakia’s founding and Kafka’s own dramatic political, professional, and personal upheavals altered his relationship to this “other Prague.” It destabilized Kafka’s understanding of nationality, language, gender, and sex—and how all these issues related to his own writing. Kafka’s Other Prague juxtaposes Kafka’s German-language work with Czechoslovak Prague’s language politics, intellectual currents, and print culture—including the influence of his lover and translator, the journalist Milena Jesenská—and shows how this changed cultural and linguistic landscape transformed one of the great literary minds of the last century.

Selected Stories

Download Selected Stories PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674296850
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Selected Stories by : Franz Kafka

Download or read book Selected Stories written by Franz Kafka and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A superb new translation of Kafka’s classic stories, authoritatively annotated and beautifully illustrated. Selected Stories presents new, exquisite renderings of short works by one of the indisputable masters of the form. Award-winning translator and scholar Mark Harman offers the most sensitive English rendering yet of Franz Kafka’s unique German prose—terse, witty, laden with ambiguities and double meanings. With his in-depth biographical introduction and notes illuminating the stories and placing them in context, Harman breathes new life into masterpieces that have often been misunderstood. Included are sixteen stories, arranged chronologically to convey a sense of Kafka’s artistic development. Some, like “The Judgment,” “In the Penal Colony,” “A Hunger Artist,” and “The Transformation” (usually, though misleadingly, translated as “The Metamorphosis”), represent the pinnacle of Kafka’s achievement. Accompanying annotations highlight the wordplay and cultural allusions of the original German, pregnant with irony and humor that English readers have often missed. Although Kafka has frequently been cast as a loner, in part because of his quintessential depictions of modern alienation, he had a number of close companions. Harman draws on Kafka’s diaries, extensive correspondence, and engagement with early twentieth-century debates about Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and Zionism to construct a rich portrait of Kafka in his world. A work of both art and scholarship, Selected Stories transforms our understanding and appreciation of a singular imagination.

The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka

Download The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691254788
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka by : Franz Kafka

Download or read book The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka written by Franz Kafka and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A splendid new translation of an extraordinary work of modern literature—featuring facing-page commentary by Kafka’s acclaimed biographer In 1917 and 1918, Franz Kafka wrote a set of more than 100 aphorisms, known as the Zürau aphorisms, after the Bohemian village in which he composed them. Among the most mysterious of Kafka’s writings, they explore philosophical questions about truth, good and evil, and the spiritual and sensory world. This is the first annotated, bilingual volume of these extraordinary writings, which provide great insight into Kafka’s mind. Edited, introduced, and with commentaries by preeminent Kafka biographer and authority Reiner Stach, and freshly translated by Shelley Frisch, this beautiful volume presents each aphorism on its own page in English and the original German, with accessible and enlightening notes on facing pages. The most complex of Kafka’s writings, the aphorisms merge literary and analytical thinking and are radical in their ideas, original in their images and metaphors, and exceptionally condensed in their language. Offering up Kafka’s characteristically unsettling charms, the aphorisms at times put readers in unfamiliar, even inhospitable territory, which can then turn luminous: “I have never been in this place before: breathing works differently, and a star shines next to the sun, more dazzlingly still.” Above all, this volume reveals that these multifaceted gems aren’t far removed from Kafka’s novels and stories but are instead situated squarely within his cosmos—arguably at its very core. Long neglected by Kafka readers and scholars, his aphorisms have finally been given their full due here.

The Nonconformists

Download The Nonconformists PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674292944
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Nonconformists by : Brian K. Goodman

Download or read book The Nonconformists written by Brian K. Goodman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-20 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How risky encounters between American and Czech writers behind the Iron Curtain shaped the art and politics of the Cold War and helped define an era of dissent. “In some indescribable way, we are each other’s continuation,” Arthur Miller wrote of the imprisoned Czech playwright Václav Havel. After a Soviet-led invasion ended the Prague Spring, many US-based writers experienced a similar shock of solidarity. Brian Goodman examines the surprising and consequential connections between American and Czech literary cultures during the Cold War—connections that influenced art and politics on both sides of the Iron Curtain. American writers had long been attracted to Prague, a city they associated with the spectral figure of Franz Kafka. Goodman reconstructs the Czech journeys of Allen Ginsberg, Philip Roth, and John Updike, as well as their friendships with nonconformists like Havel, Josef Škvorecký, Ivan Klíma, and Milan Kundera. Czechoslovakia, meanwhile, was home to a literary counterculture shaped by years of engagement with American sources, from Moby-Dick and the Beats to Dixieland jazz and rock ’n’ roll. Czechs eagerly followed cultural trends in the United States, creatively appropriating works by authors like Langston Hughes and Ernest Hemingway, sometimes at considerable risk to themselves. The Nonconformists tells the story of a group of writers who crossed boundaries of language and politics, rearranging them in the process. The transnational circulation of literature played an important role in the formation of new subcultures and reading publics, reshaping political imaginations and transforming the city of Kafka into a global capital of dissent. From the postwar dream of a “Czechoslovak road to socialism” to the neoconservative embrace of Eastern bloc dissidence on the eve of the Velvet Revolution, history was changed by a collision of literary cultures.

The Trial (Legend Classics)

Download The Trial (Legend Classics) PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Legend Press
ISBN 13 : 1789559537
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (895 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Trial (Legend Classics) by : Franz Kafka

Download or read book The Trial (Legend Classics) written by Franz Kafka and published by Legend Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the Legend Classics series It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves. A novel of such ambiguity will inevitably lend itself to a diversity of interpretation, but in The Trial you can at least be sure to find every element of storytelling now defined as Kafkaesque. Josef K., our protagonist, is unexpectedly arrested on the morning of his thirtieth birthday. The agents who arrest him are unidentified, the agency they work for is unspecified, and the crime for which he has been accused is unknown. When he is released, shortly after, he is told to await further instruction. So begins the manic and emotionless trial of a man beholden to the whims of an unknown force, and his painstaking attempts to find a way out of this existential maze. The Trial brings into focus the absurdity of life, our universal fear of judgement, and one ultimate question: how much of this endless maze will you explore before you accept the fate life has bestowed upon you? The Legend Classics series: Around the World in Eighty Days The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Importance of Being Earnest Alice's Adventures in Wonderland The Metamorphosis The Railway Children The Hound of the Baskervilles Frankenstein Wuthering Heights Three Men in a Boat The Time Machine Little Women Anne of Green Gables The Jungle Book The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories Dracula A Study in Scarlet Leaves of Grass The Secret Garden The War of the Worlds A Christmas Carol Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Heart of Darkness The Scarlet Letter This Side of Paradise Oliver Twist The Picture of Dorian Gray Treasure Island The Turn of the Screw The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Emma The Trial A Selection of Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe Grimm Fairy Tales

Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Other Writings

Download Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Other Writings PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 9780826414212
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (142 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Other Writings by : Franz Kafka

Download or read book Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Other Writings written by Franz Kafka and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essential collection of Franz Kafka's writings includes classic as well as new translations: "The Metamorphosis" "The Judgment" "A Country Doctor "In the Penal Colony" From A Hunger Artist ("First Sorrow," "A Little Woman," "A Hunger Artist," "Josephine, the Singer; or, The Mouse People") "The Hunter Gracchus" "The Great Wall of China" "Letter to His Father">

Kafka

Download Kafka PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 140086545X
Total Pages : 694 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Kafka by : Reiner Stach

Download or read book Kafka written by Reiner Stach and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Telling the story of Kafka's final years as never before—the third volume in the acclaimed definitive biography This volume of Reiner Stach's acclaimed and definitive biography of Franz Kafka tells the story of the final years of the writer's life, from 1916 to 1924—a period during which the world Kafka had known came to an end. Stach's riveting narrative, which reflects the latest findings about Kafka's life and works, draws readers in with nearly cinematic precision, zooming in for extreme close-ups of Kafka's personal life, then pulling back for panoramic shots of a wider world blighted by World War I, disease, and inflation. In these years, Kafka 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. A door seemed to open in the form of a passionate relationship with the Czech journalist Milena Jesenská. But the romance was unfulfilled and Kafka, an incurably ill German Jew with a Czech passport, continued to suffer. However, his predicament only sharpened his perceptiveness, and the final period of his life became the years of insight.

Kafka

Download Kafka PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691178186
Total Pages : 580 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Kafka by : Reiner Stach

Download or read book Kafka written by Reiner Stach and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eagerly anticipated final volume of the award-winning, definitive biography of Franz Kafka How did Kafka become Kafka? This eagerly anticipated third and final volume of Reiner Stach's definitive biography of the writer answers that question with more facts and insight than ever before, describing the complex personal, political, and cultural circumstances that shaped the young Franz Kafka (1883–1924). 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, including "The Metamorphosis." 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 biography also provides a colorful panorama of Kafka’s wider world, especially the convoluted politics and culture of Prague. Before World War I, Kafka lived in a society at the threshold of modernity but torn by conflict, and Stach provides poignant details of how the adolescent Kafka witnessed violent outbreaks of anti-Semitism and nationalism. The reader also learns how he developed a passionate interest in new technologies, particularly movies and airplanes, and why another interest—his predilection for the back-to-nature movement—stemmed from his “nervous” surroundings rather than personal eccentricity. The crowning volume to a masterly biography, this is an unmatched account of how a boy who grew up in an old Central European monarchy became a writer who helped create modern literature.