The place, Prague; the time, 1924.
On his deathbed, forty-year-old Franz Kafka instructs his best friend Max Brod to burn thousands of pages of his unpublished manuscripts. When the moment arrives, however, Brod elects not to carry out Kafka’s wishes, believing his friend is an unappreciated genius whose odd and disturbing narratives deserve widespread exposure. Brod subsequently devotes the rest of his life to promoting Kafka’s work, spurring the posthumous publication of all three of Kafka’s novel’s, including The Trial.
Despite Kafka’s disinterest in personal fame, Brod’s tireless efforts result in Kafka’s rise to literary prominence in the decades after his death. Brod manages to rescue the first drafts of Kafka’s work from Nazi Europe in 1939, carrying them in a suitcase to Palestine. At the time of his death in 1968, Brod seems to bequeath Kafka’s manuscripts to Esther Hoffe, his long-time secretary and presumed lover. However, Brod’s will is confusing, written in a way that is open to various interpretations. Over the next fifty years, Esther Hoffe and her daughter Eva engage in multiple legal skirmishes with the state of Israel, with Germany playing a behind-the-scenes role as a very interested third party. The existential question – who owns Kafka? – is finally decided by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2016.
KAFKA’S JOKE is a century-spanning, comic and Kafkaesque take on a distinctly Kafkaesque story, a tale so bizarre it can only be true.