Kafka and Cultural Zionism

Iris Bruce is associate professor of German and comparative literature at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She has published numerous articles on Kafka and Yiddish literature, Jewish folklore, Zionism, and Kafka in popular culture.

For some years now, Iris Bruce has been regarded by specialists as one of the very best Kafka scholars, admired for the meticulous scholarship of her articles and essays and her indefatigable archival work. Her special field of interest has been the Jewish and Hebrew background of Kafka's writings; and now the fruits of her decade-long immersion are at hand in a lucidly written study - detailed, engaging, comprehensive, up-to-date. It will be indispensable reading for lovers of Kafka, who will be fascinated by the full spectrum of Kafka's involvement in the cultural Zionism of his day. Until now, many of Kafka's mentions of Jewish themes, long suppressed in German editions of his journals and correspondence, have not been properly studied. Bruce's achievement makes it possible for the first time to appreciate in full the elegance of Kafka's literary transformation of this cultural stock. - Stanley Corngold, professor of German and comparative literature, Princeton University ""Focusing on cultural Zionism in Prague (and the rest of German-speaking Europe) during the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Bruce makes a compelling case that Kafka was one of the proto-cultural Zionists and quickly identified with the moment once it was established."" - Sander L. Gilman, Emory University, author of Franz Kafka, A Biography