The castle by Franz Kafka

Though he appreciated the works of Heinrich Heine, Hermann Bloch, Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka, Huxley was otherwise no great lover of German literature.

It is extraordinary that his copy of Kafka’s The Castle should have survived the 1961 bushfire that burned down his library.

Huxley regarded Kafka as one of the greatest German writers of the 20th century – greater even than Thomas Mann.

He considered The Castle one of the most important works of modern literature: ‘For me it’s one of the most important books of this time.’

(Letter to Flora Strousse, 6 January 1931; CL 345).