Michael Kumpfmüller

Der kranke Kafka lernt im Juli 1923 im Ostseebad Müritz die junge Dora Diamant, Ostjüdin und Köchin in einem jüdischen Kindererholungsheim, kennen. Die Beziehung der beiden entwickelt sich behutsam und liebevoll. Dora wird Franz bis zu seinem Tod nicht mehr verlassen.

Roman

Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens

Ach, Virginia

Mischa und der Meister

This picaresque tale of a sexually voracious bed salesman whose life is dominated by his adventures with women opens in l962 as thirty-year-old Heinrich Hampel crosses the Berlin Wall leaving the West for East. This is not a political gesture but a desperate attempt to escape debt and the sexual mayhem caused by his bold selling techniques. Charming his way into the hearts and beds of his female customers (in Bavaria in the l950s), Heinrich doubles his turnover, but when an expensive mistress appears, his long-suffering wife Rosa has cause to worry. Despite the postwar economic miracle, Heinrich's debts build until he is forced to flee across the border and take up his old ways in the East. From this audacious and outlandish opening, the novel builds up a mosaic of Hampel's life. As fresh as it is provocative, Michael Kumpfmüller's first novel was a bestselling literary sensation in Germany.

A Novel

The Adventures of a Bed Salesman

Durst

The aftermath of Franz Kafka’s love affair with Dora Diamant is legend: refusing to honor his instructions to destroy his work when he died, Diamant saved Kafka’s writings and letters that were in her possession. These were later taken by the Nazis and are still being sought today. Her importance for Kafka’s literary legacy makes their all-too-brief relationship even more intriguing. Set over the course of his last year, The Glory of Life is compelling fictional re-imagining of this fragile, tender romance. In July 1923, Kafka is convalescing by the Baltic Sea when he meets Diamant and they fall in love. He is forty years old and dying of tuberculosis; she is twenty-five and seems to him the essence of life. After a tentative first meeting, the indecisive Kafka moves with Diamant to Berlin, a city in the throes of political upheaval, rising anti-Semitism, and the turmoil of Weimar-era hyperinflation. As his tuberculosis advances, they are forced to leave the city for the Kierling Sanatorium near Vienna, a move that threatens the paradise they have created. The first of Kumpfmüller’s novels to appear in English after his acclaimed The Adventures of a Bed Salesman, The Glory of Life is a meticulously researched and poignant portrait of one of the most enduring authors in world literature. Beautifully crafted, this book is an evocative rumination on the power of love and friendship.

Michael Kumpfmüller

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