Kafka's Last Love: The Mystery of Dora Diamant

by Kathi Diamant

Book Overview

In this gripping literary detective story, Kathi Diamant brings to light the amazing woman who captured Kafka's heart and kept his literary flame alive for decades. It was Dora Diamant, an independent spirit who fled her Polish Hasidic family to pursue her Zionist dreams, who persuaded Kafka to leave his parents and live with her in Berlin the year before he died. Although many credit (or blame) her for burning many of his papers, as he had requested,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465015514
• ISBN13: 9780465015511
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A Fascinating Story

Kathi Diamant does a masterful job of compiling volumes of Franz Kafka's long-lost documents and photographs found in Cominterm files and Gestapo archives, and from notes, a diary, and letters from Kafka's last love, Dora Diamant (no relation to Kathi Diamant, to her knowledge). This paperback edition of 344 pages plus notes, is a poignant story of Dora's undying love for Kafka during their short time together, less than a year, until his death in 1924. Dora lives a remarkable life 28 years after Kafka's death, searching for his papers, before, during, and after World War II in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. She lived as an internee on the Isle of Man, and lived long enough to see the creation of a Jewish State. There are 57 pages of well-documented notes and 16 pages of photographs of Dora, Kafka, Dora's birthplace in Poland, Kafka's tombstone in Prague, his hairbrush (one of Kafka's only personal items remaining), Dora's husband Ludwig Lusk, their daughter Marianne, Dora's tombstone in London, and several photographs of friends and relatives, all of which tell a story in itself. A fascinating story, well written and documented. Pauline Hager - Author Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan Memoirs of an American Housewife in Japan

Diamant's diamond.

Kathi Diamant's "mission to find Dora" began in 1985, fourteen years after she first heard of "Dora Diamant-Kafka" and it would be another eighteen years before publishing the results of her mission to better understand Kafka and the love of his life, a mission she says is not yet complete. The author brings to life the events we passed over quickly in world history. For example, the hyperinflation in Germany after WWI, where Kafka's rent in November 1923 was one half trillion marks, up from 4 million marks just three months earlier; how a letter from Kafka with an 18 billion mark postage stamp was returned for insufficient postage. Diamant retraces the development of the Jewish state and poignantly paints the picture of individuals journeying from Poland to Russia to England to Israel. A most intriguing part of the book is Diamant raising the question of how Dora escaped from the Soviet Union just prior to WWII hinting broadly that Dora may have promised that she could be worth more to the state outside the borders than inside. This is the kind of book you can read in two or three sittings to get the overall picture, and then go back to specific episodes in Diamant's life. The biographer, probably no relation to Dora, does a fine job keeping the reader informed of dates and locations at all times. As a side note, according to the author's preface, the author "initiated" the Kafka Project at San Diego State University which was instrumental in locating long lost documents and photographs found in German archives in Berlin (1998) and Dora's diary, uncovered in Paris (2000). I assume that any serious student of Kafka already has this book on her shelf; for those beginning their study of Kafka, there may not be a better place to start.

Thoroughly enjoyed!!

I was drawn to this book because the author's search for Dora's life story was fascinating and inspiring. I expected an interesting biography, but ended up with a page-turner. While the story itself has many elements of an intrigue novel (a short and doomed love story, dramatic and tragic death, escapes from the Gestapo, locales in several countries, the mysterious fate of Kafka's documents, missing diaries, and reunited long-lost relatives) the book is actually a meticulously researched biography. So,the big bonus is that "Kafka's Last Love" can be enjoyed for its historical and literary significance, or just because it tells one heck of a good story!!

For the love of Kafka

Kathi Diamant in this work tells the story of the last love of Kafka's life, Dora Dyamant. In doing so she reveals a Kafka quite different from the standard image of him. He is revealed here as an especially magnetic, kind, humorous and playful - even loving individual. The story of his meeting with Dora Dyamant when he was already ill with tuberculosis, their falling in love, and deciding to live together, her devotion to him in the last years of his life, with him dying in her arms- is a central element in the narrative. But the story does not end with Kafka's death but rather continues following Dyamant through a series of wanderings with her ending her life in London where she was devoted to the spreading of the Yiddish language. Her one daughter would suffer a tragic fate, and die in poverty and madness. Diamant did a tremendous amount of research in revealing new details in the Kafka- Dyamant relation, and the Dyamant story as a whole. This is a work essential for all those who are obsessed with Kafka. But it also a story for those who care deeply about the relationship of Literature to Life.

Dora Diamant: impressions

There are many unknown facets of Kafka's life, and until any existing lost records (taken by the Gestapo, or destroyed by Kafka or Diamant) appear, the mysteries will continue. This book solves one of these mysteries, that of the intensity of Dora's brief (less than a year) relationship with Kafka, which was the defining and long-lasting event of her life. The narrative is quite fascinating, both in its revelations of Kafka, its insight into life as a European Jew in the 1st 1/2 of the 20th century, and in the depth of fixation on Kafka by Dora. Many of her distant relatives survive (apparently not the author) which provides a connection to the present. After Kafka's death, Dora's life was basically one of different intensities and levels of tragedy; a tradition followed by her only child who herself ended in madness and death. A "must read" for Kafkaphiles.