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Germany, Biography: literary, Prose: non-fiction, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose write
An original, inventive new biography of Franz Kafka - and his readers
'A high-spirited, richly informed, and original portrait, a cross between biography, literary analysis and a study in modern canonisation: Karolina Watroba is an inspired guide and her book a pleasure to read.' Marina Warner
In 2024, exactly one hundred years after his death at the age of 40, readers all over the world will reach for the works of Franz Kafka. Many of them will want to learn more about the enigmatic man behind the classic books filled with mysterious courts and monstrous insects. Who, exactly, was Franz Kafka?
Karolina Watroba, the first Germanist ever elected as a Fellow of Oxford's All Souls College, will tell Kafka's story beyond the boundaries of language, time and space, travelling from the Prague of Kafka's birth through the work of contemporary writers in East Asia, whose award-winning novels are in part homages to the great man himself.
Metamorphoses is a non-chronological journey through Kafka's life, drawing together literary scholarship with the responses of his readers through time. It is a both an exploration of Kafka's life and an exciting new way of approaching literary history.
Praise for Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka
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Published to mark the centenary of Kafka's death, this is an inventive biography that presents the absurdist master as a writer for our times - New Statesman
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Kafka. But there is also another part to this story, a part that does not get told nearly as often. To understand how Kafka became Kafka, we cannot stop in 1924, the year of his death, where most biographies end. To gain the status he gained, Kafka needed readers. - From the Introduction
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It might seem obvious, where our obsession with Kafka's life stems from. We want to know what made Kafka
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A high-spirited, richly informed, and original portrait, a cross between biography, literary analysis and a study in modern canonisation: Karolina Watroba is an inspired guide and her book a pleasure to read - Marina Warner
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