Max Brod 39 min read

As a state minister leaves parliament, a frantic little man forces through the guards, throws himself down, and begs for justice for 'our enemies', a small, strange incident with uncanny weight.

Max Brod's 1916 ghost story ('The First Hour After Death'), by Kafka's close friend and champion, is an eerie German novella of the supernatural. Subtle, atmospheric, of its literary moment. Read it for a haunting tale from the Expressionist heart of German-language letters.

In its time

Published in 1916, during the 1910s, lost worlds and interplanetary adventure.

Reading it

39 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).