Clean room, no beetles wanted: how a young Kafka hoped to write budget travel guides

Before writing his best-known works, Franz Kafka hoped to make millions with a series of “on the cheap” guides to European travel

Years before penning Metamorphosis, considered by some to be the greatest short story ever written, Franz Kafka hoped to make his fortune writing a series of budget European travel guides.

Kafka conceived a business plan for the books, dubbed “on the cheap”, while travelling across the continent with his friend Max Brod in the summer of 1911. This detail was revealed in volume three of Reiner Stach’s biography, Kafka: The Early Years, published in translation (by Shelley Frisch) last month.

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