Kafka: The Years of Insight

(Princeton University Press) This volume of Reiner Stach’s three-volume biography focuses on the final years of the writer’s life, from 1916 to 1924. The story examines Kafka’s personal life — his relationships with his father, sister, and with his fiancé   — and the political events that influenced his work, including the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Frisch also translated Stach’s second volume, Kafka: The Decisive Years. That translation was awarded the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize. Frisch has translated many other books from German, including biographies of Nietzsche and Einstein.