Kafka, the years of insight / Reiner Stach ; translated by Shelley Frisch.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 647-664) and index.

Prologue: the ants of Prague -- Stepping outside the self -- No literary prize for Kafka -- "Civilian kavka": the work of war -- The marvel of Marienbad -- What do I have in common with Jews? -- Kafka encounters his readers -- The alchemist -- Ottla and Felice -- The country doctor ventures out -- Mycobacterium tuberculosis -- Zurau's ark -- Meditations -- Spanish influenza, Czech revolt, Jewish angst -- The pariah girl -- The unposted letter to Hermann Kafka -- Merano, second class -- Milena -- Living fires -- The big nevertheless -- Escape to the mountains -- Fever and snow: Tatranske Matliary -- The internal and the external clock -- The personal myth: the castle -- Retiree and Hunger artist -- The Palestinian -- Dora -- The edge of Berlin -- Last sorrow -- Epilogue.

This volume of Reiner Stach's acclaimed and definitive biography of Franz Kafka tells the story of the final years of the writer's life, from 1916 to 1924--a period during which the world Kafka had known came to an end. Stach's riveting narrative, which reflects the latest findings about Kafka's life and works, draws readers in with a nearly cinematic power, zooming in for extreme close-ups of Kafka's personal life, then pulling back for panoramic shots of a wider world scarred by World War I, disease, and inflation. In these years, Kafka was spared military service at the front, yet his work as a civil servant brought him into chilling proximity with its grim realities. He was witness to unspeakable misery, lost the financial security he had been counting on to lead the life of a writer, and remained captive for years in his hometown of Prague. The outbreak of tuberculosis and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire constituted a double shock for Kafka, and made him agonizingly aware of his increasing rootlessness. He began to pose broader existential questions, and his writing grew terser and more reflective, from the parable-like Country Doctor stories and A Hunger Artist to The Castle. A door seemed to open in the form of a passionate relationship with the Czech journalist Milena JesenskaÌ. But the romance was unfulfilled and Kafka, an incurably ill German Jew with a Czech passport, continued to suffer. However, his predicament only sharpened his perceptiveness, and the final period of his life became the years of insight.