Lost Kafka writings resurface, trapped in trial

[n2doc]

By ARON HELLER, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

It seems almost Kafkaesque: Ten safety deposit boxes of never-published writings by Franz Kafka, their exact contents unknown, are trapped in courts and bureaucracy, much like one of the nightmarish visions created by the author himself.

The papers, retrieved from bank vaults where they have sat untouched and unread for decades, could shed new light on one of literature's darkest figures.

In the past week, the pages have been pulled from safety deposit boxes in Tel Aviv and Zurich, Switzerland, on the order of an Israeli court over the objections of two elderly women who claim to have inherited them from their mother.

"Kafka could easily have written a story like this, where you try to do something and it all goes wrong and everything remains unresolved," said Sara Loeb, a Tel Aviv-based author of two books about the writer. "It's really a case of life imitating art."



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/07/21/international/i135458D67.DTL&feed=rss.news_world