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"True, Kafka had been dead for forty-three years when these letters appeared. Even then, because one revered the man and his misfortune, one's first response was a feeling of awkwardness and embarrassment. I know people whose embarrassment increased, the more they read, who could not help feeling that they were intruding precisely where they should not. I respect these people, but I am not one of them. I found these letters more gripping and absorbing than any literary work I have read for years past." (3-4)

This long essay by Elias Canetti was directly occasioned by the publication of Kafka's letters to Felice, but there is more to it than that. In Kafka's Other Trial, Canetti uses Kafka's romance with Felice—ultimately a failure (how could it have been otherwise?)—to reflect on Kafka's life and to provide some insight into him as a person (and, to a lesser extent, as a writer). I particularly like that Canetti doesn't glorify or romanticize Kafka. Aside from the interesting commentary on the letters and their contents, which Canetti uses as a guide to trace the turbulent story of the relationship between Franz and Felice through all of its vicissitudes, Canetti makes some fascinating points—like how The Trial can be traced back to the 'tribunal' led by Felice that ended her engagement with Kafka. I hadn't come across such a clear exposition of this life-into-literature aspect of The Trial before. There is also a reflection on Kafka's relation to small animals in there somewhere that I love and want to write about at some point.