Prague Circle

The memoir The Prague Circle (1966) presents the last work of Max Brod, a famous German writer, essayist, and translator. The five chapters of this book, in which Franz Kafka' s friend and leading figure of Prague' s German-writing authors narrate and reminisce, significantly exceed the boundaries of memoir literature and become a unique literary-historical work.

It is an engaging book and at the same time so rich in facts that it remains an invaluable guide to Prague German literature for Czech readers. In the Prague Circle, the human and literary destinies of not only the most famous protagonists (Kafka, Werfel, Rilke), but also personalities, three, four previous generations (from Maria Ebner-Eschenbach to Hugo Salus, Franz Adler, Victor Hadwiger, Paul Leppin and Oskar Wiener). It is to the great credit of Max Brod that the literary public is becoming acquainted not only with Franz Kafka, but also with other Prague German-language authors, with this small world within the great Czech city.

The book is now being published in a revised translation more than 30 years after the first Czech edition, with a new foreword by Professor Manfred Weinberg, director of the Kurt Krolop Center in Prague, and an afterword by Professor Steffen Höhne. The book' s appendix also includes prefaces to earlier editions of the book by Eduard Goldstücker and Peter Demetz. – Comes with support Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.