“Franz Kafka was Prague and Prague was Franz Kafka,” wrote Johannes Urzidil.
But by the time I was able to travel to Prague in 2018, the Kafka House where the author was born, which is a few meters away from the Old Town Square, had already closed for reconstruction, and my own Kafkaesque experiences of the city kept me from buying a Kafka book as a preferred souvenir.
What a delightful surprise to receive “Letter to Father” as pasalubong from family friends who just got back from a trip to Europe a few weeks ago!
This publication by Vitalis is exquisite as it reveals Kafka’s lesser-known side as a graphic artist by featuring Kafka’s drawings in this famous indictment of his father.
Although it is a painful book to read, and it took me longer to finish it than I would normally a text of this length, it is nonetheless a revealing and important part of the author’s body of work. It is probably the Kafka work that has affected me the most. One line especially stood out: “My writing was all about you, all I did there was lament what I couldn’t lament at your breast.”
Intercepted by his mother for obvious reasons, the letter sadly never reached the father. And here I am, heartbroken over the fact that these words have struck the hearts of millions who have read it over a hundred years after its writing, but forever lost to the eyes that were meant to read them.
The Book-Butterfly 