The very name of Franz Kafka is synonymous with a nightmare vision of the modern world in which the individual is in a perpetual state of struggle. Some critics believe his greatest influence was his father, a demonic man who called Franz an 'insect'; others believe it was the political climate of fin de siecle Prague. PENGUIN ILLUSTRATED LIVES is a new series of photographic biographies that allows you to step into the world of your favourite writers. Each book contains a brief text (15,000words), integrated with over 100 images, many in colour, allowing an immediate, intimate understanding of their life: their family, friends, home and their work. Also included are particular visual treats such as first-edition covers, letters etc..

"This new critical biography provides a complete picture of German novelist, playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It offers fresh, thought-provoking interpretations of all the major works, including novels such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and The Elective Affinities, plays such as Egmont and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Goethe's greatest work, Faust. Alongside these works the incidents of his life are analysed, including his love affairs and his meetings with the great people of the age, such as Napoleon Bonaparte. Jeremy Adler shows how Goethe's encyclopedic interest in numerous fields influenced later thinkers such as Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim and Susan Sontag. Goethe has often been called the last Renaissance man. He was in fact the first of the moderns - a maker of modernity."--Page 4 of cover.