The Lost Writings

Franz Kafka, Reiner Stach, Michael Hofmann (University of Florida)

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English

New Directions Press
05 April 2021

Literature: history & criticism; Fiction & Literature

"Selected by thepreeminentKafka biographer and scholar Reiner Stach and newly translatedby the peerless Michael Hofmann, theseventy-four pieces gathered herehave been lost to sight for decades and two of them have never been translated into English before.

Some stories are several pages long; some run about a page; a handful are only a few lines long:all aremarvels. Even the most fragmentary texts are revelations. These pieces were drawn from two large volumes of the S. Fischer Verlag editionNachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente(totaling some 1100 pages). ""Franz Kafka is the master of the literary fragment,"" as Stach comments in his afterword: ""In no other European author does the proportion of completed and published works loom quite so...small in the overall mass of his papers, which consist largely of broken-off beginnings.""

In fact, as Hofmann recently added: ""'Finished' seems to me, in the context of Kafka, a dubious or ironic condition, anyway. The more finished, the less finished. The less finished, the more finished. Gregor Samsa's sister Grete getting up to stretch in the streetcar. What kind of an ending is that?! There's perhaps some distinction to be made between'finished' and'ended.' Everything continues to vibrate or unsettle, anyway. Reiner Stach points out that none of the three novels were'completed.' Some pieces break off, or are concluded, or stop-it doesn't matter!-after two hundred pages, some after two lines. The gusto, the friendliness, the wit with which Kafka launches himself into these things is astonishing."""

By: Franz Kafka
Edited by: Reiner Stach
Translated by: Michael Hofmann (University of Florida)
Imprint: New Directions Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 193mm, Width: 119mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 220g
ISBN: 9780811228015
ISBN 10: 0811228010
Pages: 128
Publication Date: 05 April 2021
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His major novels include The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika. Reiner Stach, born in 1951 in Saxony, is the author of the definitive biography of Kafka. The first two volumes, published by Princeton University Press, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly ( superb ), Library Journal ( a monumental accomplishment ), Kirkus ( essential ), and Booklist ( masterful ). I can't say enough about the liveliness and richness of Stach's book, Michael Dirda exclaimed in The Washington Post. Every page feels excited, dynamic, utterly alive. The poet Michael Hofmann has won numerous prizes for his German translations.

Reviews for The Lost Writings

Kafka is the greatest German writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such novelists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him. -- Vladimir Nabokov I think of a Kafka story as a perfect work of literary art, as approachable as it is strange, and as strange as it is approachable. -- Michael Hofmann This delightful collection features dozens of untitled fragments, false starts, and unfinished work by Kafka, found and chosen by biographer Stach...Opening sentences such as I was allowed to set foot in a strange garden and The city resembles the sun, make the reader's pulse heighten with the thrill of entering the space of great literature. This offers precisely the kind of fare Kafka enthusiasts would hope for from the legendary writer's archives. -- Publishers Weekly