Kafka's Friend

Book Description

This novel tells the powerfully emotional story of the friendship between two writers – Franz Kafka and Max Brod – and of the women who determined their destinies. Love and literature are constantly intertwined in the lives of the sensitive heroes. The novel is set in Prague in the period from 1903 to 1924, and then during 1953 in Tel Aviv. The beginning of the 20th century and the years immediately subsequent to World War I are convincingly described, while the biographies of the well-known heroes – despite the extent to which the factography is respected – present an unexpected story in Gavran’s interpretation. The critics: The novel Kafka’s Friend is the crowning glory of Gavran’s work to date. HRVATSKI LIST, 10.3.2011; Mia Mitrović Miro Gavran has written his best work in which he shows that an already established style can be raised to a higher level by taking away and not by adding. Kafka’s Friend is a dark tale about several friendships and several loves, and about mutual influences and deceits. KNJIŽEVNA RIJEKA, No.1; 2011.; Igor Žic That silky pocket edition on 183 pages is a great story that fitted into a small book. GLAS SLAVONIJE, 9.3.2011; Helena Sablić Tomić THE RICHNESS OF GAVRAN'S ASCETICISM It is sometimes almost magical how easily Gavran's asceticism, sometimes in the form of by-the-way remarks, but most often as a hint or a foreshadowing that activates the reader's imagination, managing to conjure up the complex relationships between his characters, their states of mind, emotional vortexes, atmosphere, dramatic situations, discreet eroticism. . . Kafka's Friend, it seems to me, is Gavran's best novel to date. VIJENAC,Strahimir Primorac, 19.5.2011. Miro Gavran's novel about Franz Kafka - a masterly piece of writing The prolific novelist and playwright, Miro Gavran, has written an excellent novel for the new Mosaic Books publishing undertaking, A Story as a Gift. This biographical novel deals with Franz Kafka and Max Brod. One of Croatia's most highly published writers, Miro Gavran, has tackled the biography of Franz Kafka and of his fateful friend, Max Brod. The new book in this venture has not only been produced excellently from the aspect of visual art (all credit to Tomislav Torjanac), but that recognized master of literary skill, Gavran, has proved himself here to be a thoroughbred literary miniaturist. In this brief but effective and moving novel, he has depicted in a number of strokes Kafka's completely maladjusted and very tragic personage, through the voice of Max Brod. Gavran has taken the known biographical facts from the writer's life, but he has not signed an arid biography, but rather a passionate novel in which there is also place for imaginative, and even unexpectedly eroticised scenes that bring to vivid life the end of a historical era. Gavran courageusly examines Kafka's relationship with Milana?Milena? Jesenski and other women, but also redresses the injustice to Brod, whose protective stance towards Kafka's work has often been the target of harsh criticism and reappraisal. Denis Derk, VEČERNJI LIST, April 27, 2011. This is a story which will be gladly read by all the fans of Gavran`s literature, it`s also for those who wish to find out more about the brilliant Franz Kafka. Marinko Krmpotić, NOVI LIST, 31.7.2011. Gavran speaks of unfulfilled love, of the meanders of submission and taking, of the difficulties of the journey of love and the conclusion of that journey, of loneliness and being lost, of Franz and Max as extemporal personages to whom the aspect of search is the only permanent feature.