Franz Werfel belonged to the "Prague Circle" of German Jewish writers whose most famous member was Franz Kafka. Werfel attained fame easily and at an early age: before World War I he was the leading poet of early expressionism; after the war, in Vienna, he produced a stream of plays, stories, and novels which made him rival Stefan Zweig as the most widely read German Jewish writer in Europe. In exile his popularity rose to even greater heights. Although his literary stature remains below those of Kafka, Hermann Broch, and Robert Musil, Werfel's oeuvre offers a more accessible portrayal of their common world. It is an evocative and sympathetic portrayal marked by the peculiar passions and loyalties of a man who insisted that he was at once a Jew and a believer in Christ.

Born in Prague in 1890, Werfel was the first-born child and only son of Rudolf...