Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy - Hardcover

Balint, Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1509836713 ISBN 13: 9781509836710

Publisher: Picador, 2019

Synopsis

'Fascinating and forensically scrupulous.' John Banville, Guardian

When Franz Kafka died in 1924, his loyal champion Max Brod could not bring himself to fulfil his friend’s last instruction: to burn his remaining manuscripts. Instead, Brod devoted the rest of his life to editing, publishing and canonizing Kafka’s work. By betraying his friend’s last wish, Brod twice rescued his legacy – first from physical destruction, and then from obscurity. But that betrayal was also eventually to lead to an international legal battle: as a writer in German, should Kafka’s papers come to rest in Germany, where his three sisters died as victims of the Holocaust? Or, as a Jewish writer, should his work be considered as a cultural inheritance of Israel, a state that did not exist at the time of his death?

Alongside an acutely observed portrait of Kafka, Benjamin Balint also traces the journey of the manuscripts Brod had rescued when he fled from Prague to Palestine in 1939 and offers a gripping account of the Israeli court case that determined their fate. He tells of a wrenching escape from the Nazi invaders of Czechoslovakia; of a love affair between exiles stranded in Tel Aviv; and of two countries whose national obsessions with the past eventually faced off in the courts.

For fans of Philippe Sands' East West Street, in Kafka’s Last Trial Benjamin Balint invites us to consider Kafka’s remarkable legacy and to question whether that legacy belongs by right to the country of his language, that of his birth, or that of his cultural affinities – but also whether any nation state can lay claim to ownership of a writer’s work at all.

About this title

Review:

A literary battle that became Kafkaesque . . . remarkable . . . I warmly recommend this deeply absorbing book. (Daily Telegraph)

[A] fascinating and forensically scrupulous account of the history of Kafka’s papers. (John Banville Guardian)

Balint fascinatingly examines how much was at stake for Germany and Israel in claiming Kafka as their man . . . [He] has minutely researched every twist and turn of this politico-legal saga, and tells it with even-handed seriousness. (Sunday Times)

Balint’s account of this saga is both a fine journalistic telling of that half century of courtroom drama, and a revealing examination of the writer and the relationships at its heart . . . Balint brings all of these forces and arguments to vivid life. (Observer)

Absorbing . . . Not only does Mr Balint ask, “Who owns Kafka?” He explores the meaning of a writer’s legacy in an age that, like Kafka’s disorienting stories, puts identity and belonging in doubt. (The Economist)

Dramatic and illuminating . . . raises momentous questions about nationality, religion, literature, and even the Holocaust. (The Atlantic)

Kafka’s Last Trial is a legal and philosophical black comedy of the first order, complete, like all the best adventure stories, with a physical treasure to be won or lost . . . : the absurdity of our modern obsession with ‘authenticity’ and ‘ownership’ (Spectator)

The question of who owns Kafka is at the heart of Benjamin Balint’s thought-provoking and assiduously researched Kafka’s Last Trial. (Literary Review)

Gripping and knotty. (New Statesman)

Balint handles these complicated claims and counter-claims with great care. He has read widely in the literature about Kafka and provides a fascinating account of the Jewish world of early 20th century Prague, which formed Kafka and Brod . . . Above all, he brings Brod to life . . . Balint is an extremely interesting writer and critic. (Standpoint)

Book Description:

The gripping story of the legal battle over the work of perhaps the most iconic writer of the twentieth century: a priceless cache of papers, an unprecedented international custody battle, and the unlikely journey of a trove of manuscripts from Prague to Palestine.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1509836713
• ISBN 13: 9781509836710
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304