Though Kafka's "Letters to Felice" chronicles one of the most bizarre love affairs in the entire history of that emotion, it is not every reader who can get through its 600 pages. We ought to be grateful, then, to Elias Canetti …, for in "Kafka's Other Trial" he summarizes the letters, interprets them in the light of Kafka's character and relates them to his books.

According to Mr. Canetti, Kafka's "trial" with Felice closely parallels his novel "The Trial." His engagement becomes Joseph K.'s arrest in the first chapter. And what his letters call the "tribunal"—a meeting with Felice and her parents in which they agree to end the engagement—corresponds to the final scene in "The Trial" when Joseph K. is executed….

"Any life is laughable," Mr. Canetti observes, "if one knows it well enough. It is something serious and terrible if one knows it even better...