“Dearest Max . . . burn all my diaries, manuscripts, letters . . . completely and unread.” When Max Brod, in 1924, defied Franz Kafka’s dying wish to consign his papers to flames, he committed a ...

Max Brod (left), a recognized writer at the time, relentlessly promoted the writings of his friend, Franz Kafka, played here respectively by David Kross and Joel Basman in the Austrian-German series ...

In his biography of Franz Kafka, Max Brod declared that his friend never wrote a “single word” that was not “infused with a special magic charm.” Ever since the posthumous publication of Kafka’s work, ...