Kafka and Flaubert on the menuTo the joy of books this week ! In 2024, we commemorate the hundred years of the death of Franz Kafka, at age 40, at the Kierling sanatorium, in Austria. Kafka? Everyone knows him, even if they have never read him, and there are not that many writers whose name has passed into common usage in this way… ” It’s Kafkaesque! », we exclaim for example to designate an absurd and restrictive administrative situation.
This posterity of the author of Trial however, hung by a thread, since we know that he had asked his friend Max Brod to burn all of his manuscripts and papers upon his death (very few of his texts having been published during his lifetime ). Fortunately for us, Max Brod betrayed this will, and thus began the complicated story of Kafka’s posthumous work: an authentic suspense novel told by Léa Veinstein, guest ofTo the joy of books for his fascinating “literary investigation”, I’ll go get Kafka (Ed. Flammarion).
Guillaume Durand receives her in the company of Éric Laurrent, author of a story entitled At work which recounts in detail the writing by Gustave Flaubert of Madame Bovary (Ed. Flammarion)… Captivating adventure that of creating a character which will also go down in posterity, and which everyone also knows, without necessarily having (re)read Flaubert’s masterpiece since their high school years.
Flaubert, Kafka: “monsters” of world literature, whose topicality is more alive than ever, as we will see in Guillaume Durand’s rich conversation with Léa Veinstein and Éric Laurrent, two writers of today, in no way outdated and full of infectious enthusiasm, which will convince us once again of the timeless joy of books.
The broadcast, in partnership with the National Book Center, will then be available for rewatching.
Photography: Statue of Franz Kafka by sculptor Jaroslav Róna, in Prague in the Czech Republic (illustration, Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0)
