LIFE AFTER KAFKA

The life of Felice Bauer, one-time fiancee of Franz Kafka, as imagined by a Czech novelist who makes herself part of the story.

Relatively little is known about Felice outside of the trove of letters Kafka wrote her (which she kept hidden for decades; he destroyed all her letters to him). Drawing on the Letters to Felice and years of research, Platzová paints a picture of a refined, well-liked, and resilient woman—the opposite of the brooding, self-doubting Kafka. When his stories became hot items after decades of neglect (he died in 1924), so did the letters. Struggling to get by in Los Angeles after the death of her banker husband, with whom she escaped the Nazi threat in Europe with their children in 1935, she sells the letters to department store magnate turned publisher Salman Schocken for $8,000 with the understanding that they would be donated to the National Library in Jerusalem after publication. To her son’s dismay, they were sold at auction after Schocken’s death for $605,000. Jumping back and forth across the 20th century, from Europe to California to Israel to New York, and with extended appearances by Max Brod, Ernst Weiss, and Grete Bloch, the novel skillfully blends myth, reality, and rumor. An actor comes forth claiming to be Kafka’s son by Bloch (who died at Auschwitz). Platzová somewhat awkwardly enters the novel to explain some of her creative choices and offer a first-person account of her real-life interview with Bauer’s son Henry (renamed Joachim in the book). The novel does what it sets out to do in removing Felice from Kafka’s shadow, but at the cost of telling us little about their relationship. "I find no great story here, just an everyday courageousness that manifests itself mainly in perseverance," writes Platzová. A noble theme, but not one that turns the pages.

An ambitious but less than transcendent work of historical fiction.