Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy

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The narrative unfolds with Kafka's final instruction to his friend Max Brod: to destroy his unpublished works upon his death. However, in 1924, Brod, unable to comply, dedicated his life to preserving Kafka's legacy, viewing him as a literary genius. This posthumous journey is filled with Kafkaesque twists. By the time Brod died in 1968, Kafka's major works had been published, elevating him to a cornerstone of literary modernism. Yet, Brod left behind a trove of unpublished papers to his secretary, who sold some and withheld the rest, eventually passing them to her daughters, who refused to release them. This led to an international legal battle over ownership of Kafka's work, with claims from Israel, where Kafka longed to live, and Germany, where his sisters perished in the Holocaust. Benjamin Balint presents a gripping account of the contentious trial in Israeli courts, rife with legal, ethical, and political dilemmas that shaped the fate of Kafka's manuscripts. The book offers a compelling biographical portrait of Kafka and explores the national obsessions of two countries grappling with their past traumas, culminating in a fierce contest for the literary legacy of a modern master.