Clayton Koelb is the Guy B. Johnson Distinguished Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A graduate of Harvard College (where he was a classmate of Kenneth Tigar) and of the Harvard Graduate School (PhD 1970), he is the author of many books and articles on European literature and culture. His translation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice has been in print in the Norton Critical Edition series since 1994. His most recent books are The Revivifying Word: Literature, Philosophy, and the Theory of Life in Europe’s Romantic Age and Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed.