Pietro Citati, author of highly acclaimed biographies of Goethe and Tolstoy, now brings the full power of his intellect and perception to a major new psychobiography of one of the most brilliant—yet personally elusive—writers of the twentieth century: Franz Kafka. This is a completely convincing exploration and recreation of Kafka's life—not so much its daily events (although the emotional architecture of the great friendship with Max Brod, Kafka's tormented relationship with his father, the extraordinary courtships of Felice Bauer and Milena Jesenská, are all wonderfully opened to fresh insight) as his inner life, and the continuous and astonishing process by which Kafka "lived" his stories, lived in the world of fantasy and literature, and made his writings metaphorical mirrors of his innermost life.

Knopf, 1990.
ISBN: 9780394568409. 320 pp.
Translated by Raymond Rosenthal.
Hardcover. Very good in a very good jacket.