-:- Franz Kafka Reading List by Katharena -:-

Franz Kafka: Main Page | Kafka's Worldwide Posthumous Fame | Discuss existentialism and Franz Kafka | Franz Kafka's Life and Times | Kafka was Timid, Guilt-Ridden, Obedient | Tuberculosis, Retirement, Death -- Kafka | Franz Kafka Reluctantly Published | the Normal and the Fantastic in Kafka's World | The Trial, Joseph K. - Franz Kafka | Kafka's Castle | Kafka's Frustrated Personal Struggles | Franz Kafka : Books and Reviews | Katharena's Essential Kafka, for the Mind on Fire!

The son of a would-be assimilated Jew who held only perfunctorily to the religious practices and social formalities of the Jewish community, Kafka was German both in language and culture. He was a timid, guilt-ridden, and obedient child who did well in elementary school and in the Altstädter Staatsgymnasium, an exacting high school for the academic elite. He was respected and liked by his teachers. Inwardly, however, he rebelled against the authoritarian institution and the dehumanized humanistic curriculum, with its emphasis on rote learning and classical languages. Kafka's opposition to established society became apparent when, as an adolescent, he declared himself a socialist as well as an atheist. Throughout his adult life he expressed qualified sympathies for the socialists; attended meetings of the Czech Anarchists (before World War I); and, in his later years, showed marked interest and sympathy for a socialized Zionism. Even then he was essentially passive and politically unengaged. As a Jew, Kafka was isolated from the German community in Prague, but as a modern intellectual he was also alienated from his own Jewish heritage. He was sympathetic to Czech political and cultural aspirations, but his identification with German culture kept even these sympathies subdued. Thus, social isolation and rootlessness contributed to Kafka's lifelong personal unhappiness. Kafka did, however, become friendly with some German-Jewish intellectuals and literati in Prague, and in 1902 he met Max Brod; this minor literary artist became the most intimate and solicitous of Kafka's friends, and eventually he emerged as the promoter, saviour, and interpreter of Kafka's writings and as his most influential biographer. --encyclopedia Britannica