Kafka Goes to the Movies

Since many of Kafka's visits to the cinema occurred during bachelor trips with Max Brod, Zischler's sleuthing took him not only to Kafka's native Prague but to film archives in Munich, Milan and Paris.

Matching Kafka's cinematic references to reviews and stills from daily papers, Zischler hunted down rare films in collections all across Europe.

A labour of love, then, by a true man of the cinema, "Kafka Goes to the Movies" brims with discoveries about the pioneering years of European film.

With a wealth of illustrations, including reproductions of movie posters and other rare materials, Zischler opens a fascinating window into movies that have been forgotten or assumed lost.

But the real highlights of the book are those about Kafka himself.

Long considered one of the most enigmatic figures in literature, the Kafka that emerges in this work is strikingly human. "Kafka Goes to the Movies" offers an absorbing look at a witty, passionate and indulgently curious writer, one who discovered and used the cinema as a place of enjoyment and escape, as a medium for the ambivalent encounter with modern life, and as a filter for the changing world around him.