The Diaries of Franz Kafka

An essential new translation of the authors complete, uncensored diaries a revelation of the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth centurys most influential writers

'The writing glimmers with sensitivity, and openness to the world' - The Wall Street Journal

Dating from 1909 to 1923, Franz Kafkas Diaries contains a broad array of writing, including accounts of daily events, assorted reflections and observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, records of dreams, and unrevised texts of stories. This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of Kafkas handwritten diary entries and provides substantial new content, restoring all the material omitted from previous publications notably, names of people and undisguised details about them, a number of literary writings, and passages of a sexual nature, some of them with homoerotic overtones.

By faithfully reproducing the diaries distinctive and often surprisingly unpolished writing as it appeared in Kafkas notebooks, translator Ross Benjamin brings to light not only the authors use of the diaries for literary invention and unsparing self-examination but also their value as a work of genius in and of themselves.