Franz Kafka, who died in 1924, wanted his remaining and largely unpublished literary works to be burned after his death, but in a turn of Kafkaesque events the manuscripts trickled down through time and eventually ended up in Eva Hoffe’s dingy, cat-friendly Tel Aviv bungalow.
Then, after 40 years, the ridiculous was cranked to 11 and the Israel National Library filed a court case over the ownership of the manuscripts. However, it will most likely be a long exhausting legal battle: Kafka’s paper were bequeathed to Eva Hoffe by her mother who was in turn bequeathed the papers by Kafka’s friend and literary agent, Max Brod, who was bequeathed the papers by Kafka himself.
