Kafka in Love
“What a gorgeous, brilliant strategy for framing a life, through a close reading and juxtaposition of Kafka’s loves. This novel must be the purest form of biography: part faithfully quoted from the letters and diaries, part richly imagined, it evokes a Kafka I had never known and sent me racing back to the major works, grateful for fresh insights. Raoul-Duval gives us the man—his ambivalences and anxieties, his passion and self-absorption, his genius. Unforgettable.” —Leonard Rosen, author of All Cry Chaos"Kafka in Lovewill be of interest for any Kafka fan; the book’s gorgeousness alone makes it worth having, with the dreamy color combinations and delicious paper texture." —The Coffin Factory"As a biography, the book follows in chronological order through Kafka’s early middle years until his death in 1924 at age 41. It is filled with intimate details of the food he ate, the cafés and theatres he went to, his dreams, his insomnia, his illnesses, and above all, his tortured, guilty obsessions with truth, sex, and writing." —Historical Novel Society"Raoul-Duval does a fabulous job of separating her voice from Kafka’s, but at the same time seamlessly flowing them together. If you enjoy Kafka’s work, or just want to read a tragic love story, this is your new book." —The Examiner"Through Kafka’s turbulent personal life, the reader can see the themes of his most enduring works of fiction taking hold in the forefront of his mind; humiliation, fatalism, and trial." —The Daily Beast"This window into the tortured and torturing Franz Kafka parallels the tragic and absurd characters he so expertly wrote about, and while we have long taken his subjects to be only mildly hidden reflections of self,Kafka in Lovereinforces the concept with fantastic results."—Leo Weekly"Just like Kafka, this book is brilliant, difficult, and alternates between nightmares and unpleasant dreams."—City Book Review"[Kafka in Love] does a better, more moving job than any...straightforward biographies in showing us the flesh-and-blood Kafka...Raoul-Duval expertly captures this and every other aspect of the writer– the movie buff, the diarist, the fantastic correspondent, the office worker, the dreamer, the oddball– and the perennial victim of boredom...a perfect reminder not only of fiction’s power to shape fact but also of Kafka himself in all his...path-breaking genius."—Open Letters Monthly