1922, Max Brod, Jüdinnen, Original Binding, Kurt Wolff Verlag München

Max Brod (1884 – 1968) was a Bohemian-born Israeli author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is best remembered as the friend and biographer of writer Franz Kafka. Kafka named Brod as his literary executor, instructing Brod to burn his unpublished work upon his death. Brod refused and had Kafka’s works published instead.In 1939, when the Nazis occupied Prague, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, taking with him a suitcase of Kafka’s papers, many of them unpublished notes, diaries, and sketches.

In his early novel Jüdinnen, Max Brod shows himself to be a first-class psychological realist. The wealthy Jewish families of Bohemia meet in the seaside resort of Teplitz/Teplice. Love affairs and wedding vows are the only complications that bring movement into this peaceful world before 1914: The aim is to find a respectable man for the pretty Irene.