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Before he died in 1924, Franz Kafka asked his closest friend, Max Brod, to burn his diaries, letters and unpublished manuscripts unread. Brod ignored the request and published them, including the novels The Trial and The Castle.

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Kafka died of tuberculosis at 40, in a sanatorium near Vienna, and was little known outside Prague. He was harsh on his own work: by some estimates he destroyed about 90% of what he wrote, helped by his last companion, Dora Diamant, who nevertheless secretly kept some notebooks that the Gestapo later seized. Brod said he had told Kafka long before that he would never carry out such an order. He published The Trial in 1925, The Castle in 1926 and Amerika in 1927. In 1939, as the Nazis occupied Prague, he left for Palestine with a suitcase of Kafka's papers. A long legal fight over those papers ended in 2016, when Israel's Supreme Court awarded them to the National Library of Israel.

Türkçe oku
Franz Kafka 1924'te ölmeden önce en yakın arkadaşı Max Brod'dan günlüklerini, mektuplarını ve yayımlanmamış el yazmalarını okumadan yakmasını istedi. Brod bu isteği yerine getirmedi ve Dava ile Şato romanları da dâhil bu yazıları yayımladı.

Kafka 40 yaşında, Viyana yakınlarındaki bir sanatoryumda veremden öldü; Prag dışında pek tanınmıyordu. Kendi yazdıklarına karşı çok acımasızdı: Bazı tahminlere göre yazdıklarının %90 kadarını kendisi yok etti. Bunda ona son sevgilisi Dora Diamant yardım etti; ama Dora bazı defterleri gizlice sakladı, bunlara da sonradan Gestapo el koydu. Brod, Kafka'ya yıllar önce böyle bir isteği asla yerine getirmeyeceğini söylediğini anlattı. Dava'yı 1925'te, Şato'yu 1926'da, Amerika'yı 1927'de yayımladı. 1939'da Naziler Prag'ı işgal ederken, bir bavul dolusu Kafka evrakıyla Filistin'e gitti. Bu kâğıtlar için yıllarca süren hukuk kavgası 2016'da bitti: İsrail Yüksek Mahkemesi belgeleri İsrail Ulusal Kütüphanesi'ne verdi.

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Background reading: Franz Kafka
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