A dying writer left his best friend an impossible instruction. Franz Kafka wanted Max Brod to burn everything he had not published. Every diary, every letter, every unfinished manuscript, burned completely and unread. Brod was the one person Kafka trusted to do it. He was also the person who had read the work and loved it. This is the story of how one refusal saved the novels that made Kafka famous, and how a suitcase of papers fled Prague and ended up in a courtroom. It begins with a question. Why would Kafka hand the job of destruction to the one reader most certain to refuse it? The answer starts with how the two men met.
Kafka Asks His Friend to Burn Everything
Kafka told Max Brod to burn his papers unread, and Brod instead published The Trial in 1925.
Chapter 1
An Impossible Request
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Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly did Kafka ask Max Brod to do with his papers?
Kafka left two written instructions asking that his unpublished manuscripts, diaries and letters be burned completely and unread. The second, sharper note named his few published books as the only ones that should stand. He also told Brod to collect letters held by other people so they could be destroyed.
Why did Max Brod refuse to burn Kafka's papers?
Brod said he had told Kafka to his face that he would never burn them. He also argued that Kafka had named him executor despite knowing this, which made the request ambivalent. Within two months of the funeral he had signed a publisher's agreement for the unfinished novels.
What happened to Kafka's manuscripts after Brod saved them?
Brod carried them out of Prague in a suitcase on March 15, 1939, and settled in Tel Aviv. After a decade-long legal battle over his secretary's estate, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in August 2016 that the manuscripts belonged to the National Library of Israel. The library has since digitized the collection.
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