Melville House Books

In this story at Haaretz, reporter Ofer Aderet talks with “the last person alive who knew Kafka personally”: 106-year-old Alice Herz-Sommer. She lives alone in a small apartment in London, is remarkably healthy, and movingly eloquent in discussing her memories — of surviving the Holocaust in the Theresienstadt camp and outliving her family, for example. As for Kafka — he was …

… a slightly strange man,” Sommer recalls. “He used to come to our house, sit and talk with my mother, mainly about his writing. He did not talk a lot, but rather loved quiet and nature. We frequently went on trips together. I remember that Kafka took us to a very nice place outside Prague. We sat on a bench and he told us stories. I remember the atmosphere and his unusual stories. He was an excellent writer, with a lovely style, the kind that you read effortlessly,” she says, and then grows silent. “And now, hundreds of people all over the world research and write doctorates about him.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.