Life After Kafka

A powerful re-imagining of what Kafka’s life and work mean now.

— New York Sun

A remarkable act of fictional recuperation that enables a new generation of Kafka-obsessed readers to feel Felice’s presence yet again.

— Jewish Book Council

A bold exploration of exile, literary history, and the price paid for being part of it.

— WOSU All Sides Weekend: Books & The Longest Chapter

Striking. . . . Incredibly evocative. . . . Life After Kafka, with its mix of research and imagination, arrives at an auspicious moment.

— Words Without Borders

Brilliantly envision[s] the Kafka-Bauer relationship.

— On the Seawall

Meticulously researched, vividly envisioned. . . . The writing deftly renders both the texture of life before and after two world wars and the persistent longing of refugees for a home that no longer exists.

— Washington Independent Review of Books

Life After Kafka is fascinating for the way that Platzová makes literature itself the main hero. . . . By canceling the enduring distinction between fiction and nonfiction, Platzová options a radical methodology of writing that reveals the unanswerable questions composing our present.

— Asymptote

Kafka afficionados will thrill to this. . . . Equal parts family memoir and a tantalizing publishing detective story, Life After Kafka raises questions about memory, privacy, and the impact on each by the passage of time.

— Historical Novels Review

Affecting.

— Library Journal (starred review)

Enchanting. . . . As Felice Bauer receives her spotlight, Platzová deserves one, too.

— Publishers Weekly

Elegantly translated. . . . An extraordinary read from start to finish.

— Midwest Book Review

This elegantly narrated novel, full of fascinations, paints an impassioned and poignant portrait of Felice Bauer and other exiles connected to Franz Kafka and charts a compelling cartography of their now vanished world.

— Benjamin Balint, author of Kafka’s Last Trial and Bruno Schulz

In Life After Kafka, Magdaléna Platzová movingly portrays Felice Bauer’s valiant efforts to forge a new life for herself and her family in the wake of historical catastrophe, even as she grapples with whether to reveal an intimate and painful chapter of her past in service to Kafka’s literary legacy. This meticulously researched and vividly imagined tale peels back the layers of cultural myth, offering a testament to a different kind of heroism.

— Ross Benjamin, translator of The Diaries of Franz Kafka

With Life After Kafka, Magdaléna Platzová has evoked a cosmopolitan storm of post–World War II emotion, an obsessive level of research, and a unique documentary-style attention that adds not only to the mystery of Franz Kafka, but to the scholarship of Kafka as well. This original, sophisticated novel bewitches and inspires.

— Joanna Hershon, author of The Outside of August and St. Ivo

Franz Kafka is a universe that resists any attempt at interpretation. Magdaléna Platzová’s novel offers a new key to Kafka’s world: we look at it through the tender and sorrowful gaze of the people whose fate had been marked by him personally. An utterly touching book!

— Agnieszka Holland, award-winning filmmaker and president of the European Film Academy

Life After Kafka is a thrilling detective story about one of literature’s most celebrated names, a haunting family saga about preserving our legacy during the darkest turns of history, and a thought-provoking exploration of the rippling impact of famous artists on the people in their lives. Platzová’s masterful merging of fact and fiction, in Alex Zucker’s artful and inspired translation, carries us across decades and continents to prove that our connections can be abandoned and yet unbroken, and that even the briefest encounters—in love and in art—can shape us forever.

— Jaroslav Kalfař, author of Spaceman of Bohemia and A Brief History of Living Forever

A deeply empathetic story of survival, exile, and belonging. Magdaléna Platzová allows Felice Bauer to step out of Kafka’s shadow and, in the process, she recognizes that there is always so much more than one truth. This is a powerful, kaleidoscopic literary novel.

— Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin and Apeirogon

Life After Kafka is not just a fictional quest to find out who Kafka’s fiancée, Felice Bauer, was and what kind of life she led after their five-year correspondence ended. In it, ‘life after Kafka’ is the existential situation into which a community of Prague-based, Jewish intellectuals were thrown . . . capturing the living conditions and possibilities of the refugees after the loss of their homes and relationships, after the shattering of the world whose ruins each of them took with them in a few suitcases.

— Magnesia Litera jury citation

A tale of love, drama and change. . . . Fans of Kafka will applaud [Platzová’s] retelling of history while others will simply enjoy a story well told.

— Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)

Kafka fans and more will delight in this imagined life of his first real love. . . . Combining fact and fiction, [Platzová] illuminates the woman, the era, and Kafka himself.

— Melanie Fleishman, Center for Fiction Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY)