The Diaries of Franz Kafka: A Discussion With André Aciman and Ross Benjamin

Dating from 1909 to 1923, the handwritten diaries of Franz Kafka contain various kinds of writing: accounts of daily events, reflections, observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, accounts of dreams, as well as finished stories. The Neue Galerie hosted a special evening with award-winning translator Ross Benjamin and New York Times bestselling author André Aciman, who discussed Benjamin’s groundbreaking new translation of “The Diaries of Franz Kafka,” complete and uncensored for the first time in print.This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of the diary entries and provides substantial new content, including details, names, literary works, and passages of a sexual nature that were omitted from previous publications. By faithfully reproducing the diaries’ distinctive—and often surprisingly unpolished—writing in Kafka’s notebooks, translator Benjamin brings to light not only the author’s use of the diaries for literary experimentation and private self-expression, but also their value as a work of art in themselves.