0
    • Elementary Secondary Higher Ed Common Reads
    0 0
    Download high-resolution image

    Letters to Felice

    Part of The Schocken Kafka Library

    Author Franz Kafka
    Ebook
    Knopf | Schocken
    On sale Jun 26, 2013 | 624 Pages | 9780804150767
    Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

    See Additional Formats
    Franz Kafka first met Felice Bauer in August 1912, at the home of his friend Max Brod. The twenty-five-year-old career woman from Berlin—energetic, down-to-earth, life-affirming—awakened in him a desire to marry. Kafka wrote to Felice almost daily, sometimes even twice a day. Because he was living in Prague and she in Berlin, their letters became their sole source of knowledge of each other. But soon after their engagement in 1914, Kafka began having doubts about the relationship, fearing that marriage would imperil his dedication to writing and interfere with his need for solitude. Through their break-up, a second engagement in 1917, and their final parting later that year, when Kafka began falling ill with the tuberculosis that would eventually claim his life, their correspondence continued. The more than five hundred letters that Kafka wrote to Felice over the course of those five years were acquired by Schocken from her in 1955. They reveal the full measure of Kafka's inner turmoil as he tried, in vain, to balance his need for stability with the demands of his craft.

    "These letters are indispensable for anyone seeking a more intimate knowledge of Kafka and his fragmented world." —Library Journal
    © Courtesy of Schocken Books

    FRANZ KAFKA was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including “The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker.” He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.

    View titles by Franz Kafka
    “Some of the most heartrending ‘love letters’ ever written.”
    —Morris Dickstein, The New York Times Book Review

    “Kafka’s correspondence with Felice has all the earmarks of his fiction—the same nervous attention to minute particulars, the same paranoid awareness of shifting balances of power, the same atmosphere of emotional suffocation—combined, surprisingly enough, with moments of boyish ardor and delight. Taken together, Elias Canetti observes, the letters provide an index of the emotional events that would inspire The Trial—a novel, Canetti argues, in which Kafka’s engagement to Felice is reimagined as the mysterious and menacing arrest of the hero.”
    —Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times

    About

    Franz Kafka first met Felice Bauer in August 1912, at the home of his friend Max Brod. The twenty-five-year-old career woman from Berlin—energetic, down-to-earth, life-affirming—awakened in him a desire to marry. Kafka wrote to Felice almost daily, sometimes even twice a day. Because he was living in Prague and she in Berlin, their letters became their sole source of knowledge of each other. But soon after their engagement in 1914, Kafka began having doubts about the relationship, fearing that marriage would imperil his dedication to writing and interfere with his need for solitude. Through their break-up, a second engagement in 1917, and their final parting later that year, when Kafka began falling ill with the tuberculosis that would eventually claim his life, their correspondence continued. The more than five hundred letters that Kafka wrote to Felice over the course of those five years were acquired by Schocken from her in 1955. They reveal the full measure of Kafka's inner turmoil as he tried, in vain, to balance his need for stability with the demands of his craft.

    "These letters are indispensable for anyone seeking a more intimate knowledge of Kafka and his fragmented world." —Library Journal

    Author

    © Courtesy of Schocken Books

    FRANZ KAFKA was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including “The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker.” He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.

    View titles by Franz Kafka

    Praise

    “Some of the most heartrending ‘love letters’ ever written.”
    —Morris Dickstein, The New York Times Book Review

    “Kafka’s correspondence with Felice has all the earmarks of his fiction—the same nervous attention to minute particulars, the same paranoid awareness of shifting balances of power, the same atmosphere of emotional suffocation—combined, surprisingly enough, with moments of boyish ardor and delight. Taken together, Elias Canetti observes, the letters provide an index of the emotional events that would inspire The Trial—a novel, Canetti argues, in which Kafka’s engagement to Felice is reimagined as the mysterious and menacing arrest of the hero.”
    —Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times

    Additional formats

    Other books in this series

    Other Books by this Author

    Related Articles

    Books for Women's History Month Book Covers: We the Women 9780593727027 NIGHT FLYER 9780593491188 Undaunted 9780525659143 DEAR MISS PERKINS 9780806543178
    General

    Books for Women’s History Month

    In honor of Women’s History Month in March, we are sharing books by women who have shaped history and have fought for their communities. Our list includes books about women who fought for racial justice, abortion rights, equality in the workplace, and ranges in topics from women in politics and prominent women in history to

    Read more

    Books for Women’s History Month

    General
    Subscribe

    Penguin Random House Higher Education

    © 2026 Penguin Random House

    Back to Top
    0
    Wish List (0)