NEWS: TLS Book of the Year

 In the Times Literary Supplement dated 17 September William Boyd mentioned my 2004 biography of Franz Kafka:

WILLIAM BOYD

"We now know that Max Brod’s bowdlerized mid-twentieth-century edition of Franz Kafka’s diaries of 1909–23 was, if not a crass violation, then a poor simulacrum of the real thing. The real thing became available, in German, in 1990. Now it comes to us in English courtesy of Ross Benjamin’s new translation – Franz Kafka: The diaries (Schocken). Here we can gain access to one of the most bizarrely complex and tormented literary minds, ever. It is fascinating. And so brilliantly translated, you would think Kafka was writing in impeccable English. I recommend reading these random, anguished, ruthlessly self-analytical pages in tandem with Nicholas Murray’s formidably cogent and clear-eyed biography, Kafka (2004), to give valuable context to these extraordinary, candid revelations."

Here’s another review: http://www.kafka.org/index.php?aid=312