A cage in search of a bird
On Sunday I gave a short list of favourite books on Kafka. I have just seen another one that’s just come out, a translation of one of Klaus Wagenbach’s many autobiographical books on K. I have an earlier, out-of-print book very much like it by the same author, which is why I resisted buying the new one there and then. Pictures of a Life is a big book full of, er, pictures. Ernst Pawel says it’s “an impressive achievement, fascinating - and fun.” Oh yes, fun. Particularly that famous final picture of Kafka aged 40, close to death from TB (that’s tuberculosis, not Thomas Bernhard).
Jeremy Adler did something like it for Penguin recently, which is even more like the new edition. I’m going to add it to my wishlist anyway, in vain I suppose.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Kafka’s Last Love
- Kafka and Smog The secondary literature on Kaf…
- Happy Birthday Franz Blow up the balloons, ligh…
- Chinese Kafka
- Kafka again
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