Kafka, Einstein, Kafeinski and Me

Download or read book Kafka, Einstein, Kafeinski and Me written by Kurt Hartmann and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kafka, Einstein, Kafeinski and Me speculates in a fictionalised but plausible way that for several months at the beginning of the 20th century, Einstein and Kafka conversed heatedly, first in Prague and later in Berlin, about the loftiest of ideas but also about everyday matters. We learn about their conversations through the answers they are imagined to be giving to questions the narrator of the novel is asking them. The narrator’s fantasy then conjures up the scientist and the novelist in a café in Berlin a hundred years later, after the 20th century had run its course. Their conversation is being constantly interrupted by the investigations of a murder which was committed near the café and which may have been racially motivated. Memories of the Holocaust gets Einstein actively involved and his effort helps solve the case. Their discussion climaxes when Einstein admits that the more he understands the universe the more pointless it seems. Kafka too is convinced of the universe’s pointlessness. They’ve hit common ground and vanish below their epitaphs. An idiosyncrasy in Einstein’s equations then catapults the narrator thirty odd years back in time to re-live a haunting love story in Cold War Berlin, the most Kafkaesque of times and places. As things unfold for the second time, they become tainted in curious ways by the conversations he imagined his two icons to have had with each other. The novel begins with that love story in Cold War Berlin. “A startling minimalist novella… very clever, very effective; the narrative voice for Einstein is plausible and for Kafka it is positively entertaining.” – Alan Mahar, The Literary Consultancy