“Life After Kafka” - Magdaléna Platzová (translated from Czech by Alex Zucker, narrated by Christa Lewis)
“She was flattered to have a writer wooing her … [but] she had never been interested in his writing; that wasn’t what she wanted. It was him she liked.”
Book 29 of #witmonth is my only audiobook, courtesy of @highbridgeaudio and @netgalley - thank you for my copy in exchange for a review.
A work of intense research and scholarship, “Life After Kafka” tells the story of Felice Bauer, the first fiancé of Franz Kafka and the recipient of “Letters to Felice”. Beginning in 1935, with Felice and her children feeling Berlin with others in Kafka’s entourage, the book follows her through her emigration to the USA with her letters in tow, attracting the interest of collectors and publishers after Kafka’s fame explodes in the 1950s.
This wasn’t the best book to listen to, as there are constant changes in time and location, coupled with factual interventions of the author herself and Felice’s son Joachim, who was interviewed for the book before his passing. Honestly, it became confusing quickly, to the point where I wasn’t sure what decade I was in, and I wasn’t invested enough in the story to keep going.
As a written work, this might have engaged me more, but as it is this wasn’t for me.

This was an incredibly interesting read. I have read Letters to Felice and when I saw this audio book available I jumped at the chance to listen. First the narrator was fantastic, there were a lot of character to keep track of and a lot of different time frames as well, but she gave each character their own voice that made it much easier to track. If you have read Letters to Felice I highly recommend, if you haven’t I recommend both .

Magdaléna Platzová invites us into the enigmatic world of Felice Bauer, once Franz Kafka’s fiancée. This Czech novel deftly blends fact and fiction, spanning time and place. As Felice grapples with selling Kafka’s letters, we glimpse survival, exile, and the kaleidoscope of truth. Yet, beyond pacing, the book leaves us yearning for deeper insight.

I think this book might be best read and not listened to as an audiobook. I often found myself confused or unsure of who was speaking, what was going on, who people were, where we were physically and in time, etc. Also, I felt like the summary was decently interesting, but after finishing this I feel like this story included a lot of nothing; I was waiting for some juicy story about Kafka and Bauer to come out or something, but found myself feeling let down when nothing was uncovered. Overall, I’m not quite sure this one hit the mark so I’m not confident that I would recommend this to others.

This book was alright, I didn't really get into it at first and then kind of half-listened for the rest of it.

I was curious about this novel, unfortunately it did not captivated me as much as I was hoping it will. I couldn't connect with it and I did not feel like there is a particular conflict in this novel - there are a couple, introduced at odd places in the book, but there was nothings to capture my attention.

The novel follows Kafka's former fiancée in an attempt to flesh her out more than his letters did.

Kafka's Letters to Felice introduced us to his fiancée, and this historical novel fleshes her out. A bit over the top in places, but overall quite an engaging read. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC/audiobook.