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Session 4 - 6 March @ 4 pm De Havilland Club

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Session 4 - 6 March @ 4 pm De Havilland Club

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Chronicle of Death Foretold

Here is a pdf copy of Marquez's famous book. For the meeting pages 29 and 30 are relevant starting from the beginning of a chapter 3 with “The lawyer stood by the thesis” until “we just came to sharpen our knives”.

To book a FREE place please follow this link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gabriel-garcia-marquez-chronicle-of-death-foretold-tickets-57783302413

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Session 3 - 27 February 2019 - Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince.  4 pm Room R118

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Session 3 - 27 February 2019 - Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince.  4 pm Room R118

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Here is pdf copy of the entire book, which you may find interesting to read. In the group we will be discussing Chapter 21 pp 63- 67 "It was then that the fox appeared..."

To book a FREE place please follow this link
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-little-prince-tickets-57090043858

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The Little Prince_Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Session 1 - 30 January 2019 @ 4 pm in Room N 108 - "I, Daniel Blake" 

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Session 1 - 30 January 2019 @ 4 pm in Room N 108 - "I, Daniel Blake" 

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Screening of Ken Loache's powerful and moving film.
Convened by Heather Crook.

To book a FREE place  please follow this link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/i-daniel-blake-tickets-55519531413

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Below is the list of events and readinsgs scheduled for the second semester.

| Wed 30 January 4-6 pm  Room N108 | Screening “I, Daniel Blake” (2016) Dir: Ken Loach

| Wed 20 February 4-6pm  |    Resistance, Rebellion and Death – Albert Camus (1961). Hecriticises capital punishment ("Reflections on the Guillotine") which is the text we will look at.

| Wed 27 February 4 - 6 pm Room R118 | The Little Prince -  Antoine Saint-Exupery -  a story which contains reflections on the themes of friendship, love, imagination and the significance of the indidividual in the world.

| Wed 6 March 4-6pm | De Havilland Club | Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Chronicle of Death Foretold -
For the meeting pages 29 and 30 are relevant starting from the beginning of a chapter 3 with “The lawyer stood by the thesis” until “we just came to sharpen our knives”.

| Wed 20 March 4-6pm |  Shoshana Zuboff,  “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” (2019) Tech companies have shown themselves to be increasingly cavalier with our personal data. Are we handing over too much information?

| Wed 3 April 4-6pm | Screening “The Castle” (1997) Dir: Rob Sitch An Austrailian QC makes a persuasive case that the Kerrigans have the right to just terms of compensation for acquisition of property and that a family home than just a structure of bricks and mortar, but a home built with love and shared memories.

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Here is a copy of a provocative 'proposal' writen by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Do not worry he was a literay satirist.

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Here is a link to the word document version of the story we will be discussing on 5 December at 4 pm

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Here is a link to an interview with the authro of 'The Salt Path'

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The Salt Path - Session 4 21 November 2018

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The Salt Path - Session 4 21 November 2018

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Here is a link to the pdf copies of the extracts we will look at in this session.

Penny Carey
P.Carey@herts.ac.uk

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The Salt Path - by Raynor Winn is a powerful story about how precarious a ‘normal’ and seemingly successful  life can be – and how in a very short space of time a couple lose their home, their business, and one of them their health.

Penny Carey

P.Carey@herts.ac.uk

Dean of Hertfordshire Law School

To book a FREE place please follow this link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reading-law-more-the-salt-path-tickets-52401155266

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Here is a copy of the judgment in the International Court of Justice regarding US military and paramilitary activities in Nicaragua handed down on 27 June 1986

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Value of owning more books that you can read - this story speaks to me. Interior design experts tell me I have too many books in my house. They say that books collect dust, are static, that is until you turn the pages, hear the rustle of paper and feel the smell the pages, They say that books just clutter the ‘space’ – vacant empty white space of course is what  they mean. I am afraid that I do not agree. Books are expression of our collective human imagination, history, creativity, experience - a way we humans share knowledge, insights, humour and have fun. That is why I have many bookshelves with many books I have not read as yet!

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Many readers buy books with every intention of reading them only to let them linger on the shelf.

Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches our lives as they remind us of all we don't know.

The Japanese call this practice tsundoku, and it may provide lasting benefits.

I love books. If I go to the bookstore to check a price, I walk out with three books I probably didn't know existed beforehand. I buy second-hand books by the bagful at the Friends of the Library sale, while explaining to my wife that it's for a good cause. Even the smell of books grips me, that faint aroma of earthy vanilla that wafts up at you when you flip a page.

The problem is that my book-buying habit outpaces my ability to read them. This leads to FOMO and occasional pangs of guilt over the unread volumes spilling across my shelves. Sound familiar?

But it's possible this guilt is entirely misplaced. According to statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, these unread volumes represent what he calls an "antilibrary," and he believes our antilibraries aren't signs of intellectual failings. Quite the opposite.

Living with an antilibrary

(Photo from Wikimedia)

Umberto Eco signs a book. You can see a portion of the author's vast antilibrary in the background.

Taleb laid out the concept of the antilibrary in his best-selling book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. He starts with a discussion of the prolific author and scholar Umberto Eco, whose personal library housed a staggering 30,000 books.

When Eco hosted visitors, many would marvel at the size of his library and assumed it represented the host's knowledge - which, make no mistake, was expansive. But a few savvy visitors realized the truth: Eco's library wasn't voluminous because he had read so much; it was voluminous because he had so much more he desired to read.

Eco stated as much. Doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, he found he could only read about 25,200 books if he read one book a day, every day, between the ages of ten and eighty. A "trifle," he laments, compared to the million books available at any good library.

Drawing from Eco's example, Taleb deduces:

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. [Your] library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary. [Emphasis original]

Maria Popova, whose post at Brain Pickings summarizes Taleb's argument beautifully, notes that our tendency is to overestimate the value of what we know, while underestimating the value of what we don't know. Taleb's antilibrary flips this tendency on its head.

The antilibrary's value stems from how it challenges our self-estimation by providing a constant, niggling reminder of all we don't know. The titles lining my own home remind me that I know little to nothing about cryptography, the evolution of feathers, Italian folklore, illicit drug use in the Third Reich, and whatever entomophagy is. (Don't spoil it; I want to be surprised.)

"We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended," Taleb writes. "It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco's library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations."

These selves of unexplored ideas propel us to continue reading, continue learning, and never be comfortable that we know enough. Jessica Stillman calls this realization intellectual humility.

People who lack this intellectual humility - those without a yearning to acquire new books or visit their local library - may enjoy a sense of pride at having conquered their personal collection, but such a library provides all the use of a wall-mounted trophy. It becomes an "ego-booting appendage" for decoration alone. Not a living, growing resource we can learn from until we are 80 - and, if we are lucky, a few years beyond.

Tsundoku

(Photo from Flickr)

Book swap attendees will no doubt find their antilibrary/tsundoku grow.

I love Taleb's concept, but I must admit I find the label "antilibrary" a bit lacking. For me, it sounds like a plot device in a knockoff Dan Brown novel - "Quick! We have to stop the Illuminati before they use the antilibrary to erase all the books in existence."

Writing for the New York Times, Kevin Mims also doesn't care for Taleb's label. Thankfully, his objection is a bit more practical: "I don't really like Taleb's term 'antilibrary.' A library is a collection of books, many of which remain unread for long periods of time. I don't see how that differs from an antilibrary."

His preferred label is a loanword from Japan: tsundoku. Tsundoku is the Japanese word for the stack(s) of books you've purchased but haven't read. Its morphology combines tsunde-oku (letting things pile up) and dukosho (reading books).

The word originated in the late 19 th century as a satirical jab at teachers who owned books but didn't read them. While that is opposite of Taleb's point, today the word carries no stigma in Japanese culture. It's also differs from bibliomania, which is the obsessive collecting of books for the sake of the collection, not their eventual reading.

The value of tsundoku

Granted, I'm sure there is some braggadocious bibliomaniac out there who owns a collection comparable to a small national library, yet rarely cracks a cover. Even so, studies have shown that book ownership and reading typically go hand in hand to great effect.

One such study found that children who grew up in homes with between 80 and 350 books showed improved literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology skills as adults. Exposure to books, the researchers suggested, boosts these cognitive abilities by making reading a part of life's routines and practices.

Many other studies have shown reading habits relay a bevy of benefits. They suggest reading can reduce stress, satisfy social connection needs, bolster social skills and empathy, and boost certain cognitive skills. And that's just fiction! Reading nonfiction is correlated with success and high achievement, helps us better understand ourselves and the world, and gives you the edge come trivia night.

In her article, Jessica Stillman ponders whether the antilibrary acts as a counter to the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias that leads ignorant people to assume their knowledge or abilities are more proficient than they truly are. Since people are not prone to enjoying reminders of their ignorance, their unread books push them toward, if not mastery, then at least a ever-expanding understanding of competence.

"All those books you haven't read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you're way ahead of the vast majority of other people," Stillman writes.

Whether you prefer the term antilibrary, tsundoku, or something else entirely, the value of an unread book is its power to get you to read it.

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Taleb laid out the concept of the antilibrary in his best-selling book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. He starts with a discussion of the prolific author and scholar Umberto Eco, whose personal library housed a staggering 30,000 books.

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Here is a link to the extract we will be looking at on 7 November 2018.

Heather Crook h.crook@herts.ac.uk

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Session 3 - 7 November 2018 12noon - 2 pm

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Session 3 - 7 November 2018 12noon - 2 pm

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'To Kill a Mockingbird' : Can you feel sorry for a woman who wrongly accuses a man of rape?

Written by Harper Lee and published in 1960, ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ is often seen as a children’s coming of age saga or as a commentary on racial injustice in the deep south in the 1930s. The story is narrated by an adult looking back on a three-year period of her childhood through her years as a school girl nicknamed Scout, who recounts various encounters with people in her home town Maycomb, Alabama. Scout and her older brother Jem, become obsessed with a reclusive neighbour called Boo (Arthur) Radley and under the guidance of their father, Atticus and African-American housekeeper, Calpurnia they interact with their various neighbours.

Scout and Jem are exposed to society’s racism and other injustices through the trial of Tom Robinson, an African-American man who is wrongly accused of raping Mayella Ewell. Atticus, the lawyer who defends Tom Robinson, faces significant animosity from the bigoted people of Maycomb County including his sister, for his struggle to procure an acquittal. Tom Robinson is convicted and killed by the guards in his prison. Bob Ewell, Mayella’s brutal father who forced her to falsely accuse Tom Robinson, seeks revenge against Jem and Scout by trying to murder them, but they are saved by Boo (Arthur) Radley who kills Bob Ewell with a kitchen knife.

Many themes abound in this novel, but the extract chosen for close analysis in the ‘Law and More’ session 3, is the (edited) trial scene which is copied here (please read before the book club). A black man is accused of rape by a white woman. We will be exploring this through the prism of their respective positions of powerlessness. Read the novel if you want to (also attached to this site), but please don't feel you have to in order to join in this session. Heather Crook h.crook@herts.ac.uk

To book a FRRE place please follow the link
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reading-law-more-to-kill-a-mocking-bird-tickets-51416229326

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Nothing gained by overcrowding! How the garden city type of development may benefit both owner and occupier

by Unwin, Raymond, Sir, 1863-1940; Garden cities and town planning association, London

Publication date 1912

Topics City planning

Publisher London, P.S. King & son, for the Garden cities & town planning association

Collection cornell; americana

Digitizing sponsor MSN

Contributor Cornell University Library

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Nothing gained by overcrowding! How the garden city type of development may benefit both owner and occupier : Unwin, Raymond, Sir, 1863-1940 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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The metadata below describe the original scanning. Follow the All Files: HTTP link in the View the book box to the left to find XML files that contain more...

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Here is the link to the amazing range of resources collected by UH Learning Resources posted on the online Talis Reading List. There you will find links to electronic copies of huge selection of fascinating books, some based on based on Obama’s summer reading list.
https://rl.talis.com/3/herts/lists/2ED3833A-777D-59D0-44AB-27C41AC60047.html?lang=en-GB&login=1

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Here is a link to A S Byatt's  home page if you would wnat to find out a little more about the author.

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Session 2 - 20 February 2019 Albert Camus & the Death Penalty

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Session 2 - 20 February 2019 Albert Camus & the Death Penalty

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Here is a link to the English translation of an extract 'Resistance, Rebellion and Death' by Albert Camus published in 1966. We will discuss the argumetns for and against the death penalty.

To book a FREE place please follow this link
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/albert-camus-on-the-death-penalty-tickets-56655235334

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Sea Story: AS Byatt. This short piece is intense, spans poetry and prose, evokes the seaside, considers love and includes words I had never heard before. I also admire that at 82 AS Byatt considers it essential to keep writing: you might like to read this interview

Karen Clark k.clark@herts.ac.uk

You can access an on-line copy by following this link.

To book a FREE place please follow this link
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reading-law-more-sea-story-tickets-51327444769

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Below is the list of the texts and meeting dates planned in Semester A.

17 October 2018 12-2pm James Ressel "Before the Law" by Franz Kafka
j.ressel@herts.ac.uk

23 October 2018 2:30-4:30pm  Henry Pearce on "Jurrasic Park" by Michale Crichton
h.pearce@herts.ac.uk

7 November 2018 12-2 pm  Heather Crook 'To Kill a Mockingird' by Harper Lee
h.crook@herts.ac.uk

21 November 2018 12:30-2:30 pm  Penny Carey on 'The Salt Path' by Raynor Winn
p.carey@herts.ac.uk

5 December 2018 4-6 pm Karen Clark "Sea Story" by A S Byatt
k.clarke@herts.ac.uk

Each session has its own colour coded resource page below with a link to the reading to be discussed, link to the booking page to reserve your place, and the convener's contact details.

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Session 1.                                                                               17 October 2018 12 noon to 2 pm 

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Session 1.                                                                               17 October 2018 12 noon to 2 pm 

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Before the Law: Franz Kafka  http://www.kafka-online.info/before-the-law.html A very short story about a man from the country seeking to striving after law. As he is dying he asks the gatekeeper why no one else has tried in all these years. The gatekeeper shouts that “tells him that Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it. James Ressel    j.ressel@herts.ac.uk

To book a FREE place please follow this link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reading-law-more-before-the-law-tickets-51150649971

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Here is the link to the extracts we will be looking at on 23 October 2018.
Henry Pearce h.pearce@herts.ac.uk

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Jurassic Park is a 1990 science fiction novel written by Michael Crichton. It presents the collapse of an amusement park showcasing genetically recreated dinosaurs to illustrate the mathematical concept of chaos theory and its real world implications.
Whilst its depiction of scenes involving escaped dinosaurs are gripping and exciting, perhaps its most memorable aspect is the subtle way in which it acts as a cautionary tale about genetic engineering, climate change, and scientific power.
Henry Pearce  h.pearce@herts.ac.uk

To book a FREE place please follow this link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reading-law-more-jurassic-park-tickets-51151755277

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Here you can post your ideas for future readings.

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Here is the link to a full text copy of the book

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To Kill A Mockingbird - Full Text PDF.pdf

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Each event will be held at the Club de Havilland
http://conferencehertfordshire.co.uk/venues/club-de-havilland/

Attedance is FREE but limited to 25. Light refreshments will be provided.

Please book your place for each session using the unique eventbrite links for each event.

If you have any general questions please contact James Ressel on j.ressel@herts.ac.uk

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Here is a link to youtube recording of a debate discussing the comepting merits of Jane Austen and Emily Bronte...have a listen and post a comment

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Jane Austen vs Emily Brontë: The Queens of English Literature Debate with Dominic West

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Here is a link to Pew Research on e-reading published in 2012 summarising the reasons why people liked reading books.  Why not add a comment about what you like best about reading books

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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In our recent report on the rise of e-reading, we asked those who had read a book in the past 12 months to tell us what they like most about book reading. They gave a host of reasons that ranged from the highly practical to the sublime.

26% of those who had read a book in the past 12 months said that what they enjoyed most was learning, gaining knowledge, and discovering information.

15% cited the pleasures of escaping reality, becoming immersed in another world, and the enjoyment they got from using their imaginations.

12% said they liked the entertainment value of reading, the drama of good stories, the suspense of watching a good plot unfold.

12% said they enjoyed relaxing while reading and having quiet time.

6% liked the variety of topics they could access via reading and how they could find books that particularly interested them.

4% said they enjoy finding spiritual enrichment through reading and expanding their worldview.

3% said they like being mentally challenged by books.

2% cited the physical properties of books - their feel and smell - as a primary pleasure.

In their own words, respondents were eloquent and touching. One respondent noted: "I am an English teacher, so I read to save my sanity from grading essays."

Those who talked about quiet entertainment tended toward phrases like "a stress-free escape," "a nice way to relax," "I read because it's not work," "diverting, entertaining and educational," and "It draws me away from reality." That was echoed by a respondent who said reading "takes you away, like a movie in your head." One wryly said he liked reading "because it helps me with my temper and relaxes me."

Those who talked about personal enrichment used phrases like "being able to experience so many times, places, and events." Others expressed pleasure at living a "life of the mind."

For many, reading was a proud lifestyle choice: "It's better for me to imagine things in my head than watch them on TV."

One compelling summary thought came from a respondent who declared: "I love being able to get outside myself."

Visit our report for more on the rise of e-reading and the general reading habits of Americans; and browse through the host of resources on the new libraries section of our site: libraries.pewinternet.org.

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Why people like to read | Pew Research Center

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In our recent report on the rise of e-reading, we asked those who had read a book in the past 12 months to tell us what they like most about book reading. They gave a host of reasons that ranged from the highly practical to the sublime.

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You are invited to join other students and members of the law staff for coffee and a read.
We will meet to talk about the ideas and impressions evoked by text introduced by the convenor.

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"Before the Law" - session 1             17 October 2018

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"Before the Law" - session 1             17 October 2018

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Here is the link to a copy of the Kafka story

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A short parable of a man who comes to a gate wishing to gain entry into the law, but the gatekeeper denies him entrance.

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If you would like to know a little more about Franz Kafka here is the link to a short biography from the Ecyclopedia Brittanica 

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If you would like to know a little more about Franz Kafka here is the link to a short biography from the Ecyclopedia Brittanica 

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Table of Contents

Franz Kafka, (born July 3, 1883, Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic]-died June 3, 1924, Kierling, near Vienna, Austria), German-language writer of visionary fiction whose works-especially the novel Der Prozess (1925; ) and the story Die Verwandlung (1915; The Metamorphosis)-express the anxieties and alienation felt by many in 20th-century Europe and North America.

Life

Franz Kafka, the son of Julie Löwy and Hermann Kafka, a merchant, was born into a prosperous middle-class Jewish family. After two brothers died in infancy, he became the eldest child and remained, for the rest of his life, conscious of his role as elder brother; Ottla, the youngest of his three sisters, became the family member closest to him. Kafka strongly identified with his maternal ancestors because of their spirituality, intellectual distinction, piety, rabbinical learning, melancholy disposition, and delicate physical and mental constitution. He was not, however, particularly close to his mother. Subservient to her overwhelming ill-tempered husband and his exacting business, she shared with her spouse a lack of comprehension of their son's unprofitable and, they feared, unhealthy dedication to the literary "recording of [his]...dreamlike inner life."

Kafka and his father

The figure of Kafka's father overshadowed his work as well as his existence. The figure is, in fact, one of his most impressive creations. In his imagination this coarse, practical, and domineering shopkeeper and patriarch who worshipped nothing but material success and social advancement belonged to a race of giants and was an awesome, admirable, but repulsive tyrant. In Kafka's most important attempt at autobiography, Brief an den Vater (written 1919; Letter to Father), a letter that never reached the addressee, Kafka attributed his failure to live, to cut loose from parental ties and establish himself in marriage and fatherhood, as well as his escape into literature, to the prohibitive father figure, which instilled in him the sense of his own impotence. He felt his will had been broken by his father. The conflict with the father is reflected directly in Kafka's story Das Urteil (1913; The Judgment). It is projected on a grander scale in Kafka's novels, which portray in lucid, deceptively simple prose a man's desperate struggle with an overwhelming power, one that may persecute its victim (as in The Trial) or one that may be sought after and begged in vain for approval (as in Das Schloss [1926; The Castle]). Yet the roots of Kafka's anxiety and despair go deeper than his relationship with his father and family, with whom he chose to live in close and cramped proximity for the major part of his adult life. The source of Kafka's despair lies in a sense of ultimate isolation from true communion with all human beings-the friends he cherished, the women he loved, the job he detested, the society he lived in-and with God, or, as he put it, with true indestructible Being.

The son of an assimilated Jew who held only perfunctorily to the religious practices and social formalities of the Jewish community, Kafka was German in both language and culture. He was a timid, guilt-ridden, and obedient child who did well in elementary school and in the Altstädter Staatsgymnasium, an exacting high school for the academic elite. He was respected and liked by his teachers. Inwardly, however, he rebelled against the authoritarian institution and the dehumanized humanistic curriculum, with its emphasis on rote learning and classical languages. Kafka's opposition to established society became apparent when, as an adolescent, he declared himself a socialist as well as an atheist. Throughout his adult life he expressed qualified sympathies for the socialists, he attended meetings of Czech anarchists (before World War I), and in his later years he showed marked interest and sympathy for a socialized Zionism. Even then he was essentially passive and politically unengaged. As a Jew, Kafka was isolated from the German community in Prague, but, as a modern intellectual, he was also alienated from his own Jewish heritage. He was sympathetic to Czech political and cultural aspirations, but his identification with German culture kept even these sympathies subdued. Thus, social isolation and rootlessness contributed to Kafka's lifelong personal unhappiness.

Kafka's double life

Kafka did, however, become friendly with some German Jewish intellectuals and literati in Prague, and in 1902 he met Max Brod. This minor literary artist became the most intimate and solicitous of Kafka's friends, and eventually, as Kafka's literary executor, he emerged as the promoter, saviour, and interpreter of Kafka's writings and as his most influential biographer. The two men became acquainted while Kafka was studying law at the University of Prague. He received his doctorate in 1906, and in 1907 he took up regular employment with an insurance company. The long hours and exacting requirements of the Assicurazioni Generali, however, did not permit Kafka to devote himself to writing. In 1908 he found in Prague a job in the seminationalized Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. There he remained until 1917, when tuberculosis forced him to take intermittent sick leaves and, finally, to retire (with a pension) in 1922, about two years before he died. In his job he was considered tireless and ambitious; he soon became the right hand of his boss, and he was esteemed and liked by all who worked with him.

In fact, generally speaking, Kafka was a charming, intelligent, and humorous individual, but he found his routine office job and the exhausting double life into which it forced him (for his nights were frequently consumed in writing) to be excruciating torture, and his deeper personal relationships were neurotically disturbed. The conflicting inclinations of his complex and ambivalent personality found expression in his sexual relationships. Inhibition painfully disturbed his relations with Felice Bauer, to whom he was twice engaged before their final rupture in 1917. Later his love for Milena Jesenská Pollak was also thwarted. His health was poor and office work exhausted him. In 1917 he was diagnosed as having tuberculosis, and from then onward he spent frequent periods in sanatoriums.

In 1923 Kafka went to Berlin to devote himself to writing. During a vacation on the Baltic coast later that year, he met Dora Dymant (Diamant), a young Jewish socialist. The couple lived in Berlin until Kafka's health significantly worsened during the spring of 1924. After a brief final stay in Prague, where Dymant joined him, he died of tuberculosis in a clinic near Vienna.

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Franz Kafka | Biography, Books, The Metamorphosis, The Trial, & Facts

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Franz Kafka, (born July 3, 1883, Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic]-died June 3, 1924, Kierling, near Vienna, Austria), German-language writer of visionary fiction whose works-especially the novel Der Prozess (1925; The Trial) and the story Die Verwandlung (1915; The Metamorphosis)-express the anxieties and alienation felt by many in 20th-century Europe and North America.