“Citati’s method is singular and complex: he has read all of Kafka’s books and probably everything ever written about him, and he has created a book that is not a biography but rather a meditation, he has written almost the life of a saint… Elegantly, but without allowing us to escape, Citati accompanies us to the depths of a soul… Much of the pleasure we experience reading Kafka lies in the writing. Citati is a wonderful stylist.”
John Banville
“Citati’s book is “impure”: exactly so. It resembles a private diary with Kafka as its subject. It has the erratic density of a collection of letters, of a vast notebook, of a miscellany with a single theme. And at the same time, it is a book structured with special care, as a novel or an autobiography is structured, but not like a biography, because, despite the quotations and factual references, Citati’s book is not a biography....read more
