A welcome, well-written addition to Kafka studies, valuable in its portrayal of the writer as a human being, not a monument.
Moving account of the one-woman phenomenon who, among other things, made the unhappy Franz Kafka’s final year a little less miserable.
Many standard biographies of Kafka have little or nothing to say about Dora Diamant (1898–1952), a free-spirited woman who left her Polish Hasidic family to work as a Zionist activist, sometime film actress, bookseller, all-around cultural force, and flame of many a man’s desire. Yet Diamant, states namesake (but no known relation) Kathi Diamant (Kafka Project/San Diego State Univ.), sparked something in Kafka from their very first meeting in Berlin in 1922. Through her influence, the desperately ill writer lightened up just a little, and their late-into-the-night whisperings about moving together to Palestine seem to have helped him cope with the daily sufferings brought about by wasting tuberculosis. Kafka kept his relationship with Dora private, save for a mention or two in postcards to his friend and later biographer Max Brod, who upon meeting her characterized the relationship as “an idyll. . . . At last I saw my friend in good spirits.” Dora was Kafka’s constant companion, and Diamant maintains that he died in her arms. (Other sources either do not record this datum or have it that she was out of the room when he slipped away.) After his death, Dora safeguarded Kafka’s papers and manuscripts, destroying some of them as he asked, but keeping others that fell into the hands of the Gestapo and have never been recovered. She fled to England and was interned as an enemy alien until, thanks to some literate intercessor’s recognition of her relationship with the writer, she was allowed to move to London, where she died—but not without first traveling to Israel and saying a prayer for her old lover.
A welcome, well-written addition to Kafka studies, valuable in its portrayal of the writer as a human being, not a monument.Pub Date: April 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-465-01550-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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