SOURCE: “Max Brod,” in Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 20, Nos. 3 & 4, 1987, pp. 81-93.

In the following essay, Pazi examines the characteristics of the Prague Circle and suggests reasons for Brod's lack of wide critical acceptance in the United States.

The literary oeuvre of Max Brod comprises ninety-five titles—novels, plays, anthologies of poems, and short stories, and semi-philosophical works—not to mention the many important essays and articles and the innumerable reviews written by him as a literary and theater critic in Prague and Tel-Aviv. Of all these writings only seven books have been translated and published in the United States. They were reviewed at length and quite favorably, but their “message,” the ethical-philosophical undercurrent of the narrative, was overlooked or misunderstood. The reasons for the failure of these works to convey the intended meaning were twofold: the development and the changes in the author's spiritual and ethnic conceptions which...