Lost and Unfounded This review appears in our Spring 2021 issue. Subscribe now to receive a copy in your mailbox. Discussed in this essay: The Lost Writings , by Franz Kafka, edited by Reiner Stach, translated by Michael Hofmann. New Directions, 2020. 128 pages. FRANZ KAFKA’S WRITINGS have from the start been afflicted with dubious editing practices, so I suppose we should not be surprised by another round of the same. Much of the author’s work was published posthumously by his friend Max Brod, who sometimes modified it in the process, rearranging material and wrenching extracts from his diaries and letters. Scholars have been sorting through the curious and sometimes sordid history of these publications for decades. Now, the publishing house New Directions has released a collection of the author’s fragments entitled