Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka the Jewish writer from Prague who wrote in German grew up after the Emancipation at a time when most Jews in Central and Western Europe suffered from an identity crisis. The most prominent characteristic of the experience of this generation of young people was hybridism a kind of partial assimilation that brought them to a dead-end. In <I>Franz Kafka: A Question of Jewish Identity</I> Sara Loeb examines this complex dialectic focusing on the question of if how and to what extent Kafka's works reflect the identity crisis he suffered. She offers a new perspective of his life through an encounter between the points of view of two well-known critics: Max Brod Kafka's close friend and Marthe Rober a literary critic who translated Kafka's works into French. Each seeks to examine in a different way the source of Kafka's link to his Jewishness. Loeb opens a window to Kafka's inner world and examines the man and his work from a new perspective.