I just spent the last three or four hours in one of the worst reading experiences of my life. Don’t get me wrong: The book was awesome. But it was so upsetting that, 30 minutes after finishing it, my heartbeat is still racing with horror and revulsion. And this during a year when I’ve read too many books about Nazi Germany, ancient and modern slavery, and 1100 pages of Sven Beckert on the history of capitalism. None of those reading experiences compares to the throbbing disturbance of this book. So what is it? Elias Canetti’s Kafka’s Other Trial. It’s about Kafka’s letters to Felice Bauer, to whom he was engaged, I think, twice, and how those letters provide the raw […]