Blue Octavo Notebooks

Kafka, Franz

ISBN 10: 1878972049 / ISBN 13: 9781878972040

Published by Exact Change, 2004

About this Item

Seller Inventory # U9781878972040

Bibliographic Details

Title: Blue Octavo Notebooks

Publisher: Exact Change

Publication Date: 2004

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: 15612659

Signed: 6/4/2025 3:33:33 PM

Edition: 1749051213.

About this title

Synopsis:

Originally omitted from Kafka's famous diaries, these notebooks contain some of Kafka's most famous aphorisms

From late 1917 until June 1919, Franz Kafka ceased to keep a diary, for which he had used quarto-size notebooks, instead writing in a series of smaller, octavo-size notebooks. When Kafka's literary executor, Max Brod, published the diaries in 1948, he omitted these notebooks―which include short stories, fragments of stories and other literary writings―because, he wrote, “notations of a diary nature, dates, are found in them only as a rare exception.” The Blue Octavo Notebooks have thus remained little known and yet are among the most characteristic and brilliantly gnomic of Kafka's work. In addition to otherwise unpublished material, the notebooks contain some of Kafka's most famous aphorisms within their original context. This edition of the English translation has been corrected with reference to the German text for certain omissions and discrepancies of sequence. Followers of Kafka will require this book and will find it most rewarding.” –Library Journal.

Review:

"Black humor, wild obscenity, delicate lyricism, mechanized eroticism, pure love, gay blasphemy, and the calm of the infinite..." -- The Observer (London)

"Kafka’s literary mosaic is again available, this time in paperback... Followers of Kafka will require this book and will find it most rewarding." -- Library Journal

An "A List" bestseller -- Voice Literary Supplement