A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia

The irony of producing A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia is not lost on the co‐authors: as they write in their Preface “Resistance to conclusive, universal meanings has come to be accepted as one of the defining traits of Kafka's fiction”. They admit “the very idea of producing an encyclopedia about his life and works seems inherently contradictory or paradoxical”. One might suppose the compilation of A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia “would be itself a ‘Kafkaesque’ enterprise: impossible, absurd, fraught with irresolvable paradoxes, destined to remain ‘a fragment’”. The authors acknowledge that the concept of the Encyclopedia “encompassing all knowledge” was devised in...