Franz Kafka – The Blue Octavo Notebooks

From late 1917 until June 1919, Franz Kafka stopped writing entries in his diary, which he kept in quarto-sized notebooks, but continued to write in a series of smaller, octavo-sized notebooks. When Kafka’s literary executor, Max Brod, published the diaries in 1948, he omitted these notebooks — which include short stories, fragments of stories, and other literary writings — because “Notations of a diary nature, dates, are found in them only as a rare exception.”

The Blue Octavo Notebooks have thus remained little known yet are among the most characteristic of Kafka’s work. In addition to otherwise unpublished material, the notebooks contain some of Kafka’s most famous aphorisms in their original context. This edition of the English translation has been corrected with reference to the German text for certain omissions and discrepancies of sequence.

“Kafka’s literary mosaic is again available, this time in paperback… Followers of Kafka will require this book and will find it most rewarding.”
— Library Journal

An “A List” bestseller
— Voice Literary Supplement