Kafkaesque: Ten Great Writers Translate the Twentieth Century

The untold story of Kafka through the eyes of his ten first and most famous translators

What happens to a writer’s work when it is translated – specifically, what happens if his name is Franz Kafka?

After Kafka died young and unknown, a German-speaking Jew in Prague, ten writers rescued him from oblivion. For years, Kafka existed mostly through their wildly different readings of his words.

Many of his first translators would later be counted among the greatest thinkers and writers of the twentieth century. Primo Levi translated Kafka into Italian from the German he had learned in Auschwitz; Milena Jesenská lovingly into Czech before being deported; Bruno Schulz into Polish before being shot by an SS officer; and Jorge Luis Borges into Spanish as he slowly went blind in Buenos Aires. His French translator found new humour hidden inside Kafka’s work, while his Russian translators were condemned to perpetual anonymity by the Soviet censor.

With inventiveness, spirit and wit, Maia Hruska has written a captivating history of the tragedies and absurdities of the twentieth century.