"One of the most astonishing and revelatory pieces of writing ever produced by this twentieth-century literary icon, presented in both the original German and the English translation. Kafka's letter to his father is at once an exploration of his relationship to his father, his need to write, and the source of his fear--one that his father prompts in him but that is beyond the scope of Kafka's memory and power of reasoning. There is no greater text about authority, the disfiguring effects of shame, and, in particular, Kafka's lifelong need to have his father's unobtainable approval"- Franz Kafka wrote this letter to his father, Hermann Kafka, in November 1919. Max Brod, Kafka's literary executor, relates that Kafka actually gave the letter to his mother to hand to his father, hoping it might renew a relationship that had lost itself in tension and frustration on both sides. But Kafka's probing of the deep flaw in their relationship spared neither his father nor himself. He could not help seeing the failure of communication between father and son as another moment in the larger existential predicament depicted in so much of his work. Probably realizing the futility of her son's gesture, Julie Kafka did not deliver the letter but instead returned it to its author.