This eagerly anticipated third and final volume of Reiner Stach's definitive biography of the
writer answers that question with more facts and insight than ever before describing the
complex personal political and cultural circumstances that shaped the young Franz Kafka
(1883-1924). It tells the story of the years from his birth in Prague to the beginning of his
professional and literary career in 1910 taking the reader up to just before the breakthrough
that resulted in his first masterpieces including The Metamorphosis. Brimming with vivid and
often startling details Stach's narrative invites readers deep inside this neglected period of
Kafka's life. The book's richly atmospheric portrait of his German Jewish merchant family and
his education psychological development and sexual maturation draws on numerous sources some
still unpublished including family letters schoolmates' memoirs and early diaries of his
close friend Max Brod.
