Kafka: Making of an Icon

Kafka: Making of an Icon marks the 100th anniversary of the author’s death, celebrating not only his achievements and creativity but also how he continues to inspire new literary, theatrical and cinematic creations around the world.

This free exhibition features materials from the archives of the Bodleian Libraries, which hold the majority of Franz Kafka’s papers, including literary notebooks, drawings, diaries, letters, postcards, glossaries, and photographs. Notably, the notebooks in the archive include the original manuscripts of two of Kafka’s unfinished novels, Das Schloss (The Castle) and Der Verschollene (America), as well as a number of short stories.

Using this rich archive, the exhibition not only sets Kafka in the context of his life and times but also shows how his own experiences nourished his imagination. His notebooks show how his travels in Western Europe enabled him to practise descriptive writing, while his readings strengthened his fascination with remote spaces and made him aware of European colonialism.

This exhibition is curated by Professor Carolin Duttlinger, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Professor Katrin M. Kohl, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Professor Barry Murnane, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Dr Meindert Peters, Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages; and Dr Karolina Watroba, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. It is supported by Malgorzata Czepiel, Curator of the Kafka Archive at the Bodleian Libraries

Opening hours: Mon-Sat 10 am – 5pm, Sun 11am – 4pm

Tying in with the exhibition, Bodleian Library Publishing has published Kafka: Making of an Icon (£35). The book is a collection of essays, illustrated with manuscripts, archival material, postcards Kafka wrote to family members, and family photographs, that celebrate Kafka’s achievements and creativity. It also shows how – even 100 years after his death – Kafka continues to inspire new literary, theatrical and cinematic creations around the world.