Letter to My Father
An Autobiographical Reckoning with Paternal Authority, Guilt, Family Conflict, and the Origins of a Singular Literary VisionBy Franz Kafka
Length2h 3m
About this audiobook
In *Letter to My Father*, Franz Kafka constructs an extraordinary document of familial accusation, self-examination, and failed communication. Addressed to his father, Hermann, the text revisits childhood memories, domestic authority, religious practice, work, marriage, and Kafka's own sense of inadequacy, transforming personal grievance into a searching inquiry into how power shapes consciousness. Neither conventional correspondence nor simple autobiography, it combines the precision of a legal brief with the anxiety, recursive logic, and dark irony characteristic of Kafka's fiction. Written in 1919 but never delivered or published during his lifetime, the letter occupies a revealing place within European literary modernism, anticipating later confessional and psychoanalytic modes while illuminating the emotional structures behind his novels and stories. Kafka's reflections emerge from a deeply ambivalent relationship with Hermann Kafka, a forceful, materially successful tradesman whose authority Kafka experienced as intimidating and morally inconsistent. The son's fraught feelings—fear, resentment, admiration, guilt, and longing for recognition—are intensified by his own struggles with illness, writing, employment, intimacy, and marriage. Although the letter is shaped by memory and rhetorical reconstruction rather than objective biography, its candor reveals Kafka's sustained effort to understand both his father and himself. This indispensable work is recommended to readers seeking the biographical and psychological dimensions of Kafka's imagination, as well as to anyone interested in modern literature's treatment of authority, memory, and selfhood. It rewards careful reading not as a final explanation of Kafka, but as a complex literary act of attempted reconciliation.
Audiobook details
GenreBiography and Memoir
Length2 hrs 3 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJan 17, 2025
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments (Annotated)
2Letter to My Father
3Text
Jüdisches literarisches Erbe – 70 Klassiker, die man kennen mussFranz Kafka, Arthur Schnitzler, Salomon An-ski, Karl Kraus, Franz Werfel, Joseph Roth, Jakob Wassermann, Stefan Zweig, Scholem Alejchem, Fritz Mauthner, Karl Emil Franzos, Ernst Toller, Berthold Auerbach, Egon Erwin Kisch, Peter Altenberg, Heinrich Heine, Marcel Proust, Sigmund Freud, Ernst Weiß, Walter Hasenclever, Hugo Salus, Oskar Baum, Edith Stein, Kurt Tucholsky, Friedrich Adler, Hermann Broch, Moses Mendelssohn, Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Theodor Herzl, Hugo Bettauer, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Karl Spindler, Walter Benjamin812h 3m$1 · $0.00
Brief an den Vater (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka3h 46m4.3 (34.3K)$2.50 · $0.00
IN THE PENAL COLONY & THE METAMORPHOSIS (Annotated)Franz Kafka4h 53m4.3 (26)$2 · $0.00
Franz Kafka - Gesammelte Werke (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka67h 28m4.6 (1.2K)$1 · $0.00
Colección integral de Franz Kafka (Anotado)Franz Kafka38h 52m$1.99 · $0.00
Amerika (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka12h 12m4.1 (266)$1 · $0.00
La metamorfosis (Anotado)Franz Kafka3h 49m4.4 (3.5K)$1.99 · $0.00
Letters to Milena (Annotated)Franz Kafka9h 46m4.2 (28.5K)$2 · $0.00
Der Verschollene (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka12h 41m4.6 (168)$1 · $0.00
Ein Landarzt - Kleine Erzählungen (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka3h 2m4.1 (9.2K)$1 · $0.00
A Hunger Artist (Annotated)Franz Kafka2h 46m4.3 (70)$2 · $0.00
The Metamorphosis + In the Penal Colony (2 contemporary translations by Ian Johnston) (Annotated)Franz Kafka4h 47m4.2 (1.3K)$2 · $0.00
A Country Doctor (Annotated)Franz Kafka2h 49m$2 · $0.00
El proceso (Anotado)Franz Kafka10h 25m4.1 (720)$1.99 · $0.00
Ein Hungerkünstler (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka2h 55m$1 · $0.00
Betrachtung (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka2h 12m3.7 (17)$1 · $0.00
Die Verwandlung (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka4h 4m4.3 (3.8K)$1 · $0.00
Brief an den Vater (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka3h 42m4.3 (35.6K)$1 · $0.00
Die größten Romane der deutschen Literatur (Kommentiert)Franz Kafka, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hans Fallada, Robert Musil, Heinrich Mann, Joseph Roth, Hermann Broch, Ödön von Horváth, Elisabeth Langgässer, Kurt Tucholsky, Karl May, Klaus Mann, Joseph von Eichendorff, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Gustav Freytag, Johanna Spyri, Theodor Fontane, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Jean Paul, Friedrich Hölderlin, Christoph Martin Wieland522h 54m$1.50 · $0.00
MotherlandJulia Ioffe17h 52m4.7 (2.5K)$40 · $0.00
Evidence Not SeenDarlene Deibler Rose11h 11m4.6 (11.9K)$29 · $0.00
Where Cowards Go to DieBenjamin Sledge8h 42m4.7 (351)$20 · $0.00
Will You Love Me?Cathy Glass9h 5m4.6 (9.3K)$29 · $0.00
Designing Terry Pratchett’s DiscworldPaul Kidby3h 52m4.7 (343)$20 · $0.00
HostageEli Sharabi5h 25m4.6 (10.8K)$24 · $0.00
Finding MeViola Davis9h 15m4.6 (256.4K)$29 · $0.00
The Dangerous Truth about Today’s MarijuanaLaura Stack CSP, MBA9h 57m4.7 (384)$20 · $0.00
Birdie & HarlowTaylor Wolfe7h 50m4.6 (6.5K)$26 · $0.00
The Lives of BrianBrian Johnson9h 45m4.6 (3.5K)$29 · $0.00
I Am The StormJanice Dean9h4.6 (1.5K)$8 · $0.00
Black History CollectionFrederick Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois27h 9m4.6 (2.6K)$18 · $0.00
Just as I AmCicely Tyson16h 8m4.6 (99K)$33 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
The Daughter of AuschwitzTova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant7h 54m4.6 (16.7K)$26 · $0.00
My Bondage and My Freedom (Annotated)Frederick Douglass15h 30m4.6 (2.4K)$2 · $0.00
Lily's PromiseLily Ebert, Dov Forman8h 54m4.6 (16.1K)$29 · $0.00
CrossroadsKaleb Dahlgren7h 56m4.6 (4.9K)$26 · $0.00
Across the RiverKent Babb11h 40m4.6 (927)$29 · $0.00
The Biography of Robert Murray M'CheyneAndrew A. Bonar7h 41m4.6 (2.2K)$1 · $0.00