Diaries: 1910-13 and 1914-23, Franz Kafka. First Edition.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is a towering figure in twentieth century literature. Born in Prague, he worked at various insurance agencies in his adult life, while dedicating the majority of his free time to writing. He was a tortured, distressed soul, despairing over his perceived isolation from the human community – women, friends, the jobs he detested, society and God. This shows in his writing, with recurring themes including alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. Kafka was not particularly fond of his writing, reluctantly publishing a few writings during his lifetime, as he became increasingly sought out by avant-garde publishers. In fact, upon his death he wrote to his friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy his manuscripts, writing: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Thankfully, Brod did not fulfill this request and published his novels and collected works between 1925 and 1935.

Kafka's Diaries were written between 1910 and 1923, the year before his death. They include casual observations, philosophical reflections, accounts of dreams and literary brainstorming, providing a penetrating look into the mind of a tortured artistic genius. From the New Yorker's review: "“It is likely that these journals will be regarded as one of [Kafka’s] major literary works; his life and personality were perfectly suited to the diary form, and in these pages he reveals what he customarily hid from the world.” This is the first English-Language Edition, complete in two volumes:

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