Diaries of Franz Kafka

Advocates of Impressionism, Existentialism and even Christianity vie with each other in claiming him as an exemplar of their doctrines. He is seen as the successor of Dostoyevsky, the disciple of Kierkegaard and the forerunner of Sartre. Yet beside the profound searching of his great 'trilogy of loneliness' - the words are those of Max Brod, his lifelong friend and editor of the diaries - such controversy seems insignificant. Kafka's diaries cover the period from 1910 to 1923, the year before his death at the age of forty. They reveal to us the extraordinary inner world in which he lived. Here he describes his fear, his isolation and frustration, his feelings of guilt and his sense of being an outcast. In between come quick glimpses of the real world, of the father he worshipped and of the woman he could not bring himself to marry. And throughout this personal journey Kafka the writer is searching for his true mode of expression.