Michael Kumpfmüller: “The glory of life”
Description
The myth of Franz Kafka, whose fame as a writer was apparently bought with a largely unhappy life, is larger than life. But now author Michael Kumpfmüller a bright, almost cheerful light on the famous poet and lovingly and discreetly depicts a person who finds great love in his last year and takes his life into his own hands before it is too late. In the summer of 1923, Franz Kafka, who suffered from tuberculosis and was only known as a poet to the initiated, met the 25-year-old cook Dora Diamant in a Baltic Sea resort. And within a few weeks he does what he never thought possible: he decides to live with a woman and shares a table and bed with Dora. In Berlin he dares to live with her in the middle of the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic. Despite the daily rising prices, the changing sublet accommodations, the suspicious parents: apart from a few days, Franz Kafka and Dora Diamant would not part again until his death in June 1924.
Author Michael Kumpfmüller turns this true story into a sensitive, careful and knowledgeable romance novel. He knows Kafka's diaries, his letters and his last texts very well and delicately weaves them into the story. But he devotes just as much attention to Dora's view, the young woman's view of her enigmatic, dying husband. And so Kumpfmüller creates a deeply moving parable about life and love, writing and death.
Michael Kumpfmüller, born in Munich in 1961, lives as a freelance author in Berlin. His novel “The Glory of Life” was made into a film by Georg Maas and Judith Kaufmann (D/A 2024 / 99min.)