Kafka's Last Love

by Diamant, Kathi

• ISBN13: 9780465015504
• ISBN10: 0465015506
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

In this gripping literary detective story, Kathi Diamant brings to light the amazing woman who captured Kafka's heart and kept his literary flame alive for decades. It was Dora Diamant, an independent spirit who fled her Polish Hasidic family to pursue her Zionist dreams, who persuaded Kafka to leave his parents and live with her in Berlin the year before he died. Although many credit (or blame) her for burning many of his papers, as he had requested, she also held onto many others-papers that the Gestapo confiscated and that have yet to be recovered. Dora's life after Kafka-from her days as a struggling agitprop actress in Berlin to her sojourn in Moscow in the 1930s, from her wartime escape to Great Britain, to her first emotional visit to the new nation of Israel-offers a prism through which we can view the cultural and political history of twentieth-century Europe.Based on original sources and interviews, including never-before-seen material from the Comintern and Gestapo archives and Dora's newly discovered notebook, diary, and letters, Kafka's Last Love illuminates the life of a literary "wife" who, like Vera Nabokov and Nora Joyce, is a remarkable woman in her own right.

Author Biography

Kathi Diamant is the Director of the Kafka Project at San Diego State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Author's Preface	p. xiii
The Threshold of Happiness	p. 1
A Dark Creature from the East	p. 15
A Free Life in Berlin	p. 32
The Idyll in Berlin	p. 48
The Burrow	p. 63
The Killing Winter	p. 75
The Most Fearful Day of Disaster	p. 90
The Best of Beginnings	p. 101
Funeral in Prague	p. 121
In Memoriam	p. 128
Life After Kafka	p. 135
Between Two Worlds	p. 143
The Nature Theater of Oklahoma	p. 150
Description of a Struggle	p. 165
Exodus from Berlin	p. 180
The Workers Paradise	p. 193
The Great Escape	p. 211
The Isle of Man	p. 222
Friends of Yiddish	p. 234
Something Indestructible Within	p. 250
The Promised Land	p. 265
A Memory Come Alive	p. 282
"Mach Was Du Kannst"	p. 303
Kafka's Daughter	p. 317
A Redwood Grows in Hampstead	p. 332
Epilogue	p. 341
Notes	p. 345
Sources	p. 387
Index	p. 395
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