“…culture belongs…in its original context.” #kafka #20BOS26 Book 29

As I do keep saying, books lead to other books… I was unsure what to pick up after the Borges/di Giovanni and did spend a little time reading up on the state of Borges’ literary estate. And this reminded me that I had a book lurking on the TBR which explored another issue of contested literary heritage – “Kafka’s Last Trial” by Benjamin Balint. Obviously this was going to be the perfect next read… Literary estates have always been a torrid subject; from the burning of Lord Byron’s journals by his publishers through to Ted Hughes’s somewhat cavalier treatment of Sylvia Plath’s papers, it’s an emotive subject. Kafka’s legacy, however, is a knotty one, and it’s the opposite of the two cases I quoted. As is well known, Kafka died young from tuberculosis and left instructions with his friend Max Brod to destroy all of his papers and unpublished writings. Brod famously ignored those instructions, edited and published the writings, and because of that we have “The Trial”, “The Castle” and so…