The Diaries of Franz Kafka

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Signed copies from translator Ross Benjamin are available.

This book was featured as part of our Literatur Café series. 

By Franz Kafka 
Translated by Ross Benjamin 
 
“Essential . . . The new volume, in a sensitive and briskly idiomatic translation by Ross Benjamin, offers revelation upon revelation. It’s an invaluable addition to Kafka’s oeuvre.”—The New York Times 
 
“Franz Kafka’s inner life has always been a bit of a mystery. The expurgated diaries in their original German and English versions hinted at his complicated, often confused relationship to sex, politics, illness, and being Jewish. This readable new translation of the complete German version of the diary transforms the silent Kafka of a century ago into a Kafka not only of his times but of ours.”—Sander Gilman, author of Franz Kafka, The Jewish Patient

An essential new translation of the author’s complete, uncensored diaries—a revelation of the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers.

Dating from 1909 to 1923, the handwritten diaries contain various kinds of writing: accounts of daily events, reflections, observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, accounts of dreams, as well as finished stories. 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 Ross 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.

Hardcover
704 pages
Schocken, 2023
6.2 x 9.25 inches
ISBN 9780805243550
Literature, Kafka