Life After Kafka

A novel of Felice Bauer, Franz Kafkas first fiancée, and the story behind Letters to Felice

Franz Kafka scholars know Felice Bauer, his onetime fiancée, through his Letters to Felice, as little more than a woman with a raucous laugh and a taste for bourgeois comforts. Life After Kafka is her story. The novel begins in 1935 as Felice flees with her children from Hitlers Berlin, following her family and members of Kafkas entourageincluding Grete Bloch, Max Brod, and Salman Schockenas they try to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. Years later, a man claiming to be Kafkas son approaches Felices son in Manhattan and the drama surrounding Kafkas letters to Felice begins.

While taking the measure of literary fames long shadow, Life After Kafka depicts the magic and poison of memories, and what we cling to when all else is lost. Most of all, it illuminates the bravery required to move forward through the shattered remains of one world to rebuild life in a new one.