Franz Kafka was not a household name during his lifetime, but he was admired by the kinds of readers who could recognize greatness and immediately usher it into their house of reading — Rainer Maria ...

Harcourt, 592 pages, $35. ‘I am nothing, absolutely nothing,” declared Franz Kafka, who longed to contract his life into a perfect sentence. Eighty-one years after his death, we’ve got plenty of ...