Novel
Franziska
Ernst Weiss · 1919
Synopsis
On the death of her mother, a young girl from a small town in Bohemia, born into a modest family, turns away from love and sets her heart on becoming a concert pianist. Her ambition takes her from her native town to an unconventional life in Prague, then to Berlin, on the eve of the war. She nevertheless falls in love with an unemployed fitter, who is torn between two women.
Context
The book appeared in 1916 with S. Fischer under another title, Der Kampf; its author had corrected the proofs in July 1914, on holiday in Denmark with Kafka, his friend. He then revised it and published it in 1919 under the name of its heroine, in a series of contemporary novels from the same publisher, and it is this second version that modern editions reprint. It is his second novel, after a first book set in the medical world.
Who it is for
A little over two hundred pages. Readers who know the author from his late novels will find here a simpler book, from his first manner.
Prizes and reception
The novel of its author's early career; Kafka had read its proofs. Weiss revised and retitled it three years after its publication; it was then reissued in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp and translated into English.
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