Kafka's Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de Siècle (Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de Siecle)
"An innovative study of Kafka's search for literature, cogent and elegantly argued throughout."--Choice"A fascinating and insightful reading of Kafka, which places the Czech writer's attitude to the body, and his engagement with theories of body culture, art and adornment of his period, at the centre of his work."--The Guardian"Spritely, innovative, and provocative....It is a book about Kafka worth reading."--London Times Saturday Review"By focusing on Kafka's clothes as image and reality, Mark Anderson succeeds in a wholly original manner in penetrating the mysterious ether that seems to understand Kafka's literary corpus as disembodied from his life and times. Anderson's work restores Kafka to fin-de-siecle Austrian, and especially Viennese, cultural and intellectual life. The author has reconnected Kafka with his work, arguing persuasively that in Kafka's case, life and art are reciprocal spheres that illuminate each other. The historian will be particularly interested in and grateful for Anderson's accomplishment....If clothes helped define Kafka the man, then Anderson's book will help redefine the man in conjunction with his literature."--Austrian History Yearbook"It is Kafka's precarious position in this cultural environment that Mark Anderson reconstructs superbly in a well-researched and very readable study. The book is indispensable reading for Kafka scholars and highly recommendable to anyone interested in a renewal of historic criticism and cultural interpretation."--The German Review