In his final days, Franz Kafka urged his friend, Max Brod, to destroy all his writings, a move that would have prevented The Trial and The Castle from ever being read by the public. Instead, Brod devoted his life to championing Kafka's writing, rescuing his legacy from obscurity. Upon Brod's 1968 death, however, many unpublished works passed into the hands of his unscrupulous secretary, and then on to her daughters, who in turn refused to release them. Telling a story that is indeed Kafkaesque, Benjamin Balint offers a gripping account of the controversial trial in Israeli courts that determined the fate of Kafka's manuscripts.