In 1922 Kafka started work on his novel The Castle, but his health, never robust, was deteriorating (he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis). He suffered frequent illnesses and nervous breakdowns. Though engaged to two different women, Kafka never married. He took increasing interest in the Zionist movement and the possibility of moving to Palestine. In Berlin in 1923 Kafka met Dora Dymant, a Jewish socialist 20 years younger than Kafka, and they planned to immigrate to Palestine together. This never happened, as Kafka became ill in April 1924 and died in Prague at the age of 40. After Kafka’s death, Max Brod, disobeying his friend’s final wishes, published the unfinished manuscripts of The Trial and The Castle. Kafka (in a handwritten note found among his papers) had instructed Brod to destroy the two works along with his other manuscripts. Gradually Franz Kafka’s posthumous reputation increased. The dreamlike but psychologically accurate portrayal of the experiences of the hapless K., along with the portrayal of irresistible forces able to crush the individual human being, have made The Trial a classic of twentieth-century literature.
End of the patchwork empire.
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