The Glory of Life

In the summer of 1923, Franz Kafka, suffering from tuberculosis and known only to insiders as a poet, meets the twenty-five year old cook Dora Diamant in a Baltic sea spa. They fall in love and within just a few weeks he does what he could never have imagined – he decides to live together with Dora; to share his life with her in Berlin. Against all odds – during the times of hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, despite the daily climbing prices, the ever-changing rooms to sublease, and despite his wary parents, they make a living together. Up to his death in June 1924, Franz Kafka and Dora Diamant were inseparable.

The myth surrounding Franz Kafka, whose posthumous reputation as a writer seems to be a high price to pay for his largely unhappy life, is larger than life. Michael Kumpfmüller sheds a bright, almost cheerful light on the poet. He imagines a sensitive, gentle and informative romantic novel out of this true period of life. He knows Kafka’s diary, his letters and his last texts inside out and delicately weaves them into his narrative. Likewise, he devotes himself to Dora’s view; that of a young woman in love with an enigmatic and agonizing man. He draws a tender and discrete picture of a person, who in his last years of life found his great love, and takes hold of his life before it is too late. A moving parable about life and love, writing and death.

“Dora is with me, she is really good for me.” Franz Kafka: Letter to his parents, 9th April 1924