Földvári Books

Original Typescript of Conversations With Kafka

Janouch, Gustav

Franz Kafka řekl… Vzpomínky a záznamy. [Franz Kafka Said… Memories and Records.] [Conversations with Kafka.]

Praha: 1947. Mimeographed typescript. Text in Czech, only on rectos. [158] leaves. Handwritten, contemporary note in pencil on the title page and a few corrections and underscores throughout. Some pages creased, chipped, or dog-eared. First and last pages partly detached. Altogether in very good condition.

Copy of the original Czech typescript of Janouch’s book, later published under the title Conversations with Kafka.

The author of this extraordinary portrait of Kafka, was the Czech composer and author, Gustav Janouch (1903–1968). As a seventeen-year-old aspiring poet, he was introduced to Kafka by his father, who worked with the writer at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute. Janouch accompanied Kafka on his walks through Prague, where they “talked about everything, from writing to carpentry”. Janouch took notes of these conversations, and in 1947 he was ready with the first version of the book, in German and Czech, in order to publish it. The first edition was published in 1951 in German (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer), and a revised edition was issued in 1968, both titled Gespräche mit Kafka. The latter version of the book was translated to Czech in 2009.

The present, Czech typescript, which remained unpublished, bears the original title, intended by Janouch, Franz Kafka řekl… (Franz Kafka said…), and seems to be identical in content to the 1951 German edition.

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Price: €10,000.00