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I recently read Kafka’s (unfinished) novel The Castle, which I had last read about thirty or so years ago. I thought The Trial, The Castle and The Metamorphosis were the bees’ knees when I originally read them, and still do, but didn’t really think much of Amerika or the other short stories at the time. I think I didn’t like them much because they were not like The Trial etc., but my relatively recent re-read of Amerika showed me that it was worth attempting these other works without expecting them to be another version of The Trial.

The Vintage collection I read is split between ‘Longer’ and ‘Shorter’ stories, with some of the shorter stories being less than a page long; some were just fragments of stories and many were only published posthumously. Having finished the collection, I’m beginning to appreciate just how inventive Kafka was as…

     I bought this because I was planning to re-read his amazing novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, and then watch the film; I hadn’t known much about his life or that he was widely travelled, in the years at the end of the eighteenth century when his native Poland was gradually being dismembered and removed from the map of Europe.

Potocki is a careful observer with a good eye for detail and a focus on the exotic (or what would have seemed exotic to a European traveller at the time). The book is extremely well presented with a very detailed commentary and copious annotation, rather like the current Hakluyt Society volumes in the UK. The one thing seriously lacking is maps of any sort, to allow the curious reader to track the traveller’s progress.

It’s a strange mish-mash of places: travel through Holland during a revolution, extensive…

A random survey of self-portraits created by women through the centuries

German artist Eva Schulze-Knabe (1907-1976)

1. Self-portrait, 1929 / Oil on cardboard / Dresden State Art Collections, Germany

2. Self-portrait, 1931 / Oil on plywood / Private collection

3. Montage of self-portraits, various dates / B&W photographs / Various locations

4. Self-portrait with helmet, 1971 / Painting / Dresden State Art Collections, Germany

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A random survey of self-portraits created by women through the centuries

Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi (born 1972)

Self-portrait, 2005 / C–type print / From the series ‘Cui Cui’, Edition of 6

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