Commemorative edition for the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka's death, June 3, 1924.

IN NOVEMBER 1919, Franz Kafka takes two weeks off from his job and goes to a small village near Prague, where he rents a room in a boarding house. His sole purpose is to write a letter to his father, in which he expresses, through the description of many incidents from his childhood, the tense and controversial nature of their relationship in all its extent and depth.

Kafka is thirty-six years old when he writes this letter, and his father is sixty-seven; nevertheless, the verbal expressions and emotional tone of the entire letter evoke a deeply frightened child, standing with awkwardness and awe before the despotic paternal figure.

It is worth noting that the letter never reached its intended recipient, for reasons we can only speculate about. Nevertheless, it may be the closest thing we have to Kafka's autobiography, shedding light on the dark yet magnificent literary universe of the great writer. At the same time, it is a fundamental text of literary modernity and a strong analysis of urban psychogenesis, particularly regarding the psychological roots of power and dependence.

However, its most significant contribution is that it conveys a critically important message, which remains extremely relevant to this day, one that all parents in the world should consider and study.

“The poignant letter of a son to his father, by one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century. One of the most profound confessions in literature.”

The New York Times Book Review

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Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one of the most important and influential writers of the 20th century. A child of German-speaking Jews, he was born in Prague and wrote all his books in the German language. After his premature death, his fame skyrocketed worldwide, and his books are continuously published in almost every language in the world. Some of his most well-known works, The Eight Blue Notebooks, Parables & Paradoxes, The Hunger Artist & Other Stories, are published by Archetypo Editions.