Recovering Franz Kafka's asbestos factory

Abstract

This article recalls Franz Kafka’s part ownership of the asbestos factory, Prague Asbestwerke Hermann & Co. to introduce two forms of literary recovery, exemplified by Alan Bennett’s 1985 television play, The Insurance Man, and James Kelman’s 1994 novel, How late it was, how late. Both works develop divergent politicized styles, based on their respective readings of Kafka’s life and work. Rather than simply recuperating Kafka from this biographeme or damning him for it, they find the aesthetic means to represent the asbestos problem in the combination of Kafka’s biography and writing, either by addressing the long tail of asbestos exposure or by focussing on the interiority of asbestos victims. Brought together, these approaches turn the recovery of Kafka’s asbestos factory into a case for thinking about precarity, activism, compensation and justice.