Kafka was a subject of the Austrian empire, yet his relationship with its capital city is uncharted territory for scholars of his work. As a boy, he witnessed Franz Josef‘s visit to his home city, and later he was exposed to musical and literary influences from the vibrant Habsburg capital, yet he himself hated it. So it is hardly surprising that he came to Vienna not as a tourist, but while passing through, as a conference participant or as a lover, while critically ill and on his death bed, before returning to Prague from the Viennese municipal funeral parlour in a tin coffin. This lavishly illustrated volume is a guide to the sites that this literary figure graced with his presence; it lists the Viennese actors and authors who Kafka admired and disdained, and reveals the causes of his aversion to the city. This is the first exhaustive account of the place held by the city and its people in Kafka’s life and thoughts.

“Binder is to Kafka research what the Greenwich Royal Observatory is to astronomy.”

Stuttgarter Zeitung