Kafka Controversy Continues

Eighty-five years after his death, the author of The Castle and Amerika is at the heart of a strange controversy. From The Guardian:

Israel’s National Library is calling on a German museum to hand over the original manuscript of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial to correct a “historical error”, in the latest unravelling of a complex dispute over the writer's legacy.

The manuscript was sold at auction by Sotheby's in 1988 for almost $2m to a book dealer acting on behalf of the German government and is stored in the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach. Now the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, which collects all works published in Israel, says that The Trial should be returned to the country in accordance with the final wishes of Max Brod, a friend of Kafka and the executor of his will.

The full story is here.