Kafka’s Last Love : The Mystery of Dora Diamant

In this gripping literary detective story, Kathi Diamant brings to light the amazing woman who captured Kafka’s heart and kept his literary flame alive.

It was Dora Diamant, an independent spirit who persuaded Kafka to leave his parents and live with her in Berlin the year before he died. Although many credit (or blame) her for burning many of his papers, at his request, she also held on to many others – papers that the Gestapo confiscated. Dora’s life after Kafka – from her days as a struggling agitprop actress in Berlin to her sojourn in Moscow in the 1930s, from her wartime escape to Great Britain, to her first emotional visit to the new nation of Israel – offers a prism through which we can view the cultural and political history of twentieth-century Europe.

Kafka’s Last Love illuminates the life of a literary ‘wife’ who, like Vera Nabokov and Nora Joyce, was a remarkable woman in her own right.