Last year, Oxford’s Bodleian Library hosted a public debate. On one side of a board, “BURN” was printed in red. On the other, “PUBLISH”. Visitors placed stickers to cast their votes. The final display in an exhibition marking the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death, it answered his final wish to Max Brod, his friend and later editor: “Dearest Max . . . burn all my diaries, manuscripts, letters . . . completely and unread”. Many voters chose — unlike Brod — to obey Kafka’s will.
Turkish-Kurdish novelist Burhan Sönmez’s sixth book, Lovers of Franz K, casts the debate back to 1968 Berlin. Merging fact and fiction against the backdrop of student protests in Berlin, Istanbul and Paris, it opens with the interrogation of a man under arrest for the murder of a student. The accused is Ferdy Kaplan, who spent his adolescence in Istanbul poring over Kafka’s texts. Sharing his literary infatuation is Amalya, his lover and suspected collaborator.