Letters to Ottla & the Family is a book collecting Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

's letters to his sister Ottla (Ottilie Davidová, née Kafka), as well as some letters to his parents Julie and Hermann Kafka. These letters were composed between 1909 and 1924; though Ottla died in the Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

, the letters were preserved by her husband and children. Originally published in German in 1974, the letters were translated into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 by Richard and Clara Winston and published by Schocken Books

Schocken Books

Schocken Books is a publishing company that was established in Berlin with a publishing office in Prague in 1931 by the Schocken Department Store owner Salman Schocken. It published the writings of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Kafka and S. Y...

in 1982. The English edition also includes photographs of Kafka and Ottla, as well as several images of postcards, letters, and drawings Kafka had sent his sister.