Life After Kafka

Who was Felice Bauer, Franz Kafka's fiancée, known to generations of his admirers only as a lover of meaty dishes, heavy furniture and punctual clocks? Little is known of her life after the break with the Prague writer: she married, had two children, emigrated to America and kept for forty years the letters of the man who had left her. The author began to follow her trail in the United States in 2010, when Felice's son was still alive. Mixing historical narrative with reportage, essay and document, the book also follows others close to Kafka whose fates were bound to prewar Europe and its ruins: Grete Bloch, Ernst Weiss, Max Brod and Salman Schocken, refugees who carried their lost world with them in a few suitcases.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

237 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Migration (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States, Czechia

First published

2022 by Argo

Author's age

50 when first published

ISBN

9788025738207 (original)

9781954276291 (Bellevue Literary Press, United States)