The Blue Octavo Notebooks (sometimes referred to as The Eight Octavo Notebooks) is a series of eight notebooks written by Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

 from late 1917 until June 1919. The name was given to them by Max Brod

Max Brod

Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka...

, Kafka's literary executor, to differentiate them from the regular quarto-sized notebooks Kafka used as diaries. Along with the octavo notebooks, Brod also found a series of extracts copied out and numbered by Kafka. Brod named this brief selection "Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope, and the True Way" and included it in The Great Wall of China.

Publication

When Brod published Kafka's diaries

Franz Kafka's Diaries

Franz Kafka's Diaries, written in German language between 1910-1923, include casual observations, details of daily life, reflections on philosophical ideas, accounts of dreams, and ideas for stories...

 in 1948 he decided to omit the octavo notebooks as he considered their contents more philosophical and literary than the regular diaries Kafka kept. The Octavo notebooks were later included in a volume of fragments and uncollected writings published in 1953, along with the numbered extracts. The notebooks first appeared in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 in Dearest Father. Stories and Other Writings

Dearest Father. Stories and Other Writings

Dearest Father. Stories and Other Writings is a collection of writings by Franz Kafka translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins with notes by Max Brod...

(Schocken Books

Schocken Books

Schocken Books is a publishing company that was established in Berlin with a publishing office in Prague in 1931 by the Schocken Department Store owner Salman Schocken. It published the writings of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Kafka and S. Y...

, 1954). Some English printings removed the extracts from their original place in the notebooks to avoid repetition.

The Blue Octavo Notebooks were published in English in a single volume edition by Exact Change

Exact Change

Exact Change is an independent book publishing company formed in 1990 by Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang of Galaxie 500 and later of Damon and Naomi...

(1991, ISBN 1-878972-04-9). This edition includes the complete notebooks, the numbered extracts, and Max Brod's original notes.

Analysis

Scholars have noted that from late 1917 until June 1919, Kafka stopped writing entries in his diaries, and instead wrote in these notebooks, the bulk of which were aphorisms. The notebooks contain fragments, but like much of Kafka's writings they allude to important themes among the human condition. The notebooks are recognized for expressing some of Kafka's interest in Judaic studies, though he continued to live a secular lifestyle.