A splendid new translation of an extraordinary work of modern literature-featuring facing-page
commentary by Kafka's acclaimed biographer. In 1917 and 1918 Franz Kafka wrote a set of more
than 100 aphorisms known as the Zèurau aphorisms after the Bohemian village in which he
composed them. Among the most mysterious of Kafka's writings they explore philosophical
questions about truth good and evil and the spiritual and sensory world. This is the first
annotated bilingual volume of these extraordinary writings which provide great insight into
Kafka's mind. Edited introduced and with commentaries by preeminent Kafka biographer and
authority Reiner Stach and freshly translated by Shelley Frisch this beautiful volume
presents each aphorism on its own page in English and the original German with accessible and
enlightening notes on facing pages.The most complex of Kafka's writings the aphorisms merge
literary and analytical thinking and are radical in their ideas original in their images and
metaphors and exceptionally condensed in their language. Offering up Kafka's
characteristically unsettling charms the aphorisms at times put readers in unfamiliar even
inhospitable territory which can then turn luminous: I have never been in this place before:
breathing works differently and a star shines next to the sun more dazzlingly still.Above all
this volume reveals that these multifaceted gems aren't far removed from Kafka's novels and
stories but are instead situated squarely within his cosmos-arguably at its very core. Long
neglected by Kafka readers and scholars his aphorisms have finally been given their full due
here--
