Kafka

Contemporary Review, April, 2005

Kafka: A Very Short Introduction. Ritchie Robertson. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]6.99. ix 136 pages. ISBN 0-19-280455-3. As Mr Robertson says perceptively in his opening pages, 'the sombre Kafka is for the 20th (and so far the 21st) century what the sombre figure of Byron was for the 19th'.

The adjective, 'Kafkaesque' is as popular now as 'Byronic' was 180 years ago. Much of this is based on 'myth' created by the writer himself and is just as powerful as the Byronic myth and just as inaccurate. The author admits that one cannot go behind the myth to the reality because the evidence is not there. One can, however, 'go back to Kafka's own writings and see how he made his experience, and the circumstances of his life, into this image', One can also correct certain errors by reference to the information we have got. Mr Robertson's chapter on Kafka and religion ('The Last Things') is particularly illuminating and in itself makes the book worth reading. (A.C.)