Description: An inventive literary obituary for Kafka, this thriller of love and revenge brings the Cold War to life, from Paris and Istanbul to West Berlin and Tel Aviv.
Amid the student protests in 1960s Europe, Kafka's best friend, Max Brod, becomes a target of their ire: Against the dying writer's wishes, he had published texts that never should have been part of his legacy. After Brod is injured in an attempted assassination, assailant Ferdy Kaplan is captured and questioned by Commissioner Müller of the West Berlin police. As his interrogation progresses, through dialogues in the police station, the courtroom, and the prison, Kaplan's background is revealed piece by piece, from the love story between him and his childhood friend Amalya, to their shared passion for Kafka, which leads them to join a radical group. But when a shocking discovery is made about the person who ultimately set Brod's attempted murder in motion, Kaplan and Müller agree to work together to expose the truth. In this gripping, thought-provoking tribute to Kafka, Burhan Sönmez vividly recreates a key period of history when the Berlin Wall divided Europe, and women were fighting for freedom and against tradition, adopting Jean Seberg's iconic short haircut from Breathless. More than a typical mystery, Lovers of Franz K. is a brilliant exploration of the value of books, and the issues of anti-Semitism, immigration, and violence that recur in Kafka's life and writings.Review Quotes: "There's a Kafkaesque quality to the interrogation...but Kurdish author Sönmez is really interested in the question of who owns literature...The dialogue-led approach makes the book punchy and fast-moving, and brings some surprising twists before the end." --The Guardian, The Best Recent Translated Fiction
"What begins as a noirish police procedural, complete with sardonic dialogue and cigarette smoke curling beneath fluorescent lights, soon shifts into a story driven by ethical conundrum as much as by the apparatus of suspense...Still, the novella's intellectual ambition never eclipses its narrative allure. Mr. Sönmez's prose, gracefully spare in Mr. Hêzil's translation, evocatively channels Kafka himself." --Wall Street Journal "Sönmez...wrestles with fraught questions of loyalty and legacy in this contemplative literary thriller...Sönmez's sharp thematic layering and concise worldbuilding impress. This is a good bet for mystery readers seeking something off the beaten path." --Publishers Weekly "Lovers of Franz K. is a gripping tale of idealism colliding with history and moral uncertainty. It portrays characters scarred by their past as they grapple with unanswerable questions and make startling decisions. Exploring passion, loyalty, and history, Sönmez's novel will leave you questioning what it truly means to write, to love, and to honor the literary creator versus the creation." --Ava Homa, author of Daughters of Smoke and Fire "Did Max Brod commit a crime by not fulfilling Kafka's last will--to burn all his works? Burhan Sönmez is not a judge. He is only a scribe at the Last Judgment, recording the speeches of the parties. And he does his job brilliantly." --Mikhail Shishkin, author of Maidenhair "A gripping tale of youthful single-mindedness and institutionalization...a glass-bottomed boat swirling through the Bosphorus of Kafka's consciousness and works, glaring into the depths of him, his mercurial shadows and shifting states." --Lemn Sissay, author of My Name Is Why