By (author) Franz Kafka; By (author) Kafka Franz; Translated by Stokes Hannah
Short description/annotation:
Written as a long, tense and dramatic confession in which writer and man are gathered together in front of an ambivalent figure of authority, "Dearest Father" is a desperate attempt to retrace the origins of a turbulent and highly conflicted relationship between an unflinching parent and an extremely sensitive child.
Description:
Conflict between father and son is one of the oldest themes in literature, and in this open letter to his father - a letter which was never sent - Kafka tries to come to terms with one of the most deeply rooted obsessions of his troubled soul. Written as a long, tense and dramatic confession in which writer and man are gathered together in front of an ambivalent figure of authority, "Dearest Father" is a desperate attempt to retrace the origins of a turbulent and highly conflicted relationship between an unflinching parent and an extremely sensitive child. Both a merciless indictment of his father and an impassioned appeal to him, Kafka''s inspired work is one of the most lucid and touching psychological documents of the twentieth century.
Biographical note:
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one of the giants of twentieth-century German literature. His stories, such as The Metamorphosis (1915), and novels, including The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal and bureaucratic world.