Just before his death, in 1924,Franz Kafkasent a note to his friend Max Brod:"Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me...in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread....Yours, Franz Kafka"There's been much debate about this note ever since Brod published it in a postscript to the first edition of The Trial. Did Kafka really intend that Brod destroy his manuscripts? The conclusion, as much as one can be reached, seems to be no, that Kafka asked precisely the one person who had already told him he would not honour his wishes. Brod felt too keenly the value in Kafka's unpublished work; his literary ethic overcame his personal scruples, and he devoted much of his life to publishing the writing Kafka had left behind.Luckily for us. Unluckily, perhaps, for Kafka scholars, the three novels left behind -The Trial, Amerika(originally titledThe Man Who Disappeared), andThe Castle- were all unfinished. Brod heavily edited the manuscripts, correcting Kafka's idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation, reordering paragraphs and chapters, and "fixing" their endings, so that they would read as if complete."This new edition, by undoing the attempts of previous editors and translators to "rationalize" the text, reveals Kafka's project as manifest in his very prose. It is puzzling, even maddening at moments, but infinitely rewarding."-Kathleen Fitzpatrick