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"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"--… (more)
User reviews
I remember reading it throughout a whole couple of nights, unable to force myself
I can still recall one entire setting where he just describes a billowing shawl of a woman waiting in winter for a train. This is not art but is simply beyond art.
We can never be grateful enough to Max Brod for preserving the manuscript against Kafka’s wishes, which I regard as one of the two most significant events in twentieth century literature. The other of course being Sylvia Beach deciding to publish The Ulysses.