Product Description

Description: "Followers of Kafka will require this book and will find it most rewarding." --Library Journal From late 1917 until June 1919, Franz Kafka stopped writing entries in his diary, which he kept in quarto-sized notebooks, but continued to write in a series of smaller, octavo-sized notebooks. When Kafka's literary executor, Max Brod, published the diaries in 1948, he omitted these notebooks--which include short stories, fragments of stories, and other literary writings--because, "Notations of a diary nature, dates, are found in them only as a rare exception." The Blue Octavo Notebooks have thus remained little known yet are among the most characteristic of Kafka's work. In addition to otherwise unpublished material, the notebooks contain some of Kafka's most famous aphorisms in their original context. This edition of the English translation has been corrected with reference to the German text for certain omissions and discrepancies of sequence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #165289 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-02
• Released on: 2004-01-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 120 pages

Customer Reviews

greatest format for the greatest writing by the greatest writer of the 20th century
To face the prospect of religion without religion.
To face the prospect of death head on.
To be truly fearless in the face of human terror, folly, and weakness.

To scribble all this courage into a modest little notebook, without the need for fame or immortality, without the pretense of literature or art.

Just a great man working through the miracle of his life.
It takes courage just to read it.

Haven't read it yet -- just bought it --
But read the reviews, it is true, the gentleman from Ontario is priceless, and I agree with Erica as well. I've read the two-volume edition of his diaries and they seem to be much more touching and emotional -- sensitive to beauty -- than most of his published work. Though I would say the published work is also funny, "Investigations of a dog," for example. I think the diaries give a good, new angle on the published work. And I don't think they were "written for publication."

*********** THE NOTEBOOK ****************
Like the notebooks of Nietzsche, Camus, Andre Gide, and Wittgenstein...
this book of discovered notebooks is a sharp and wonderfully illuminating glimpse into the deep-thinking mind of a master of his literary craft. A Great Read!