Letter to the Father/Brief an Den Vater: Bilingual Edition

by Franz Kafka

Book Overview

Franz Kafka wrote this letter to his father, Hermann Kafka, in November 1919. Max Brod, Kafka's literary executor, relates that Kafka actually gave the letter to his mother to hand to his father, hoping it might renew a relationship that had lost itself in tension and frustration on both sides. But Kafka's probing of the deep flaw in their relationship spared neither his father nor himself. He could not help seeing the failure of communication between...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805212663
• ISBN13: 9780805212662
• Release Date: November 2015
• Publisher: Schocken Books Inc
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

One of the most moving and revealing works of Kafka

This is a letter never sent. It is written from Kafka the tormented son to his father Hermann. It tells of the relationship of father and son, as seen by the son. But a good part of the son's seeing is his understanding of his father, and his father's perception of and disappointment with him. It is an analysis of his father's life also , and in a way an attempt to make a kind of connection with the distant father the son has not really had in life. For anyone who has had a difficult father whose love and approval they so much longed for , and did not have - this work will be a soul- opening one. It is painful, deep, true and as with all Kafka somehow mysteriously deep and beautiful . A great great work of a great great genius.

Do not miss it!!!! Look for it everywhere!!

This little book, actually, "letter" will get to your heart. Its one of the most human prose I have ever read, the intimate conflits in a father-son relationship. No not stop until you find it, you will not regret it.

Captures the universal relationship between father and son

Definitely read this book if you can ever find it and if you like Kafka. It's a deeply personal, open-minded, unapologetically contradictory analysis of the relationship between one over-bearing, opinionated father and his timid son. One of the best books I've read