Upcoming Meetings
Next meeting: Monday 15 September 2025, 6.30pm
At the next Litfest International Fiction Online Book Club meeting we will discuss Franz Kafka’s modern classic, Metamorphosis (translated from the German by Michael Hofmann and published in paperback and eBook by Penguin)
‘What Dante and Shakespeare were for the ages, Kafka is for ours … His relevance is absolutely unbroken’ – George Steiner
This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka’s works that he himself thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies; The Judgement, written in a single night of frenzied creativity; The Stoker, the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, and The Aeroplanes at Brescia, Kafka’s eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka’s literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.
‘One of the few great and perfect works of poetic imagination written during the twentieth century’ – Elias Canetti on ‘Metamorphosis’
Author
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was a Czech-born German-speaking insurance clerk who despised his job, preferring to spend his time writing. Nevertheless, Kafka published little during his lifetime, and ordered his closest friend, Max Brod, to burn the mass of unpublished manuscripts, now familiar to us as some of the most influential novels and short stories of the twentieth century, after his death. Kafka’s novels, all published posthumously, include The Trial, The Castle and Amerika.
Translator
Michael Hofmann has published five books of poems, including Acrimony and, most recently, One Lark, One Horse. His collection of essays, Where Have You Been? was published by Faber & Faber in February 2015. He has made selections of the poetry of Robert Lowell and John Berryman, and, with James Lasdun, co-edited the influential anthology After Ovid. Hofmann has translated many German authors, including Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Hans Fallada and Alfred Döblin. His translation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos won the 2024 Booker International Fiction Prize. He lives in London and Germany, and since 1993 has held a half-time teaching position at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Photo of Michael Hofmann by Barbara Hoffmeister
Join The Club
To join the Litfest International Fiction Book Club which meets regularly, usually on the third Monday of every month, email Bill Swainson at [email protected]
You can buy a paperback copy of this month’s book and other book club choices by going to our online bookshop and in this way – or by donating – support the book club and Litfest’s work. Thank you.
