Translation Salon: Kafkaesque

Maïa Hruska and Daniel Hahn are at The London Library on Thursday 5 November for a talk on the translation of Kafka's work. It's the first in the library's new Translation Salon series, which celebrates its collection of books in and translated from languages all over the world. This one is presented in partnership with the Jewish Literary Foundation.

Hruska is the author of Kafkaesque, and the talk follows the story of the translators who saved Kafka's work from oblivion. It traces how his words were read by early translators who later counted among the greatest thinkers and writers of all time — names like Primo Levi, Milena Jesenská, Bruno Schulz and Jorge Luis Borges. There's a nice symmetry to her connection to the subject: born to a Czech-French family and raised in Germany, she now lives in London and works as a lawyer, just as Kafka did. She's fluent in Czech, French, German and English, so she's coming to this from inside the languages themselves.

Hosting the evening is Daniel Hahn, a writer, editor and translator who in 2026 published If This Be Magic: the unlikely art of Shakespeare in translation alongside translations of Latin American fiction. The talk takes place in the New Room at 14 St James's Square, SW1Y 4LG. It runs from 6:30pm to 8:30pm, with the talk itself from 7pm to 8pm. Standard tickets are £14.84 including booking fees, with under-30s and unwaged tickets at £10.60, and London Library member tickets at £12.72 for under-30s and unwaged.