„Atef Botros’ description and explanation of the Arab Kafka provides us with an enlightening characterization of the so called „crisis of Arab identity“ (…) I do not know of any similar profound access to the neurotic obsessions [e.g. Arab mental blockades in the reception of the Jewish] in the context of the „Jewish“ than his detailed analysis.“ Prof. Georg Meggle (German Philosopher, Leipzig) „The book warns of the decline of a long hermeneutical tradition into a literary discourse which is bound in political stereotypes. The writer wants to preserve the moments in which Kafka’s oeuvre is very close to the modern literary tradition of the Arab world and in which he became a source of progressive thought in Egypt.“ Galili Shahar, Haaretz, 29.09.2008 Regardless of skin color, religion, language and place, everyone feels close to this ill friend who lived in Prague, composed his work in German, but whose massage survived despite his early death; his name is Franz Kafka”, wrote the German Iraqi writer NaÊm WÁlÐ. In a poem of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish Kafka seems to be even closer to Arab reality: “I found Kafka sleeping under my skin, in accord with our garb of nightmare and the police in us”. The 1988 Nobel Prize holder, Naguib Mahfouz, wrote: “I have known Kafka for more than forty years, but I encountered (faced/met) him first particularly after the Arab defeat of 1967”.Since 1939, in the Arab world Kafka’s oeuvre has been read, commented on, translated and quite controversially discussed: whether through identification, appropriation, literary inspiration, projection, misunderstanding, or politicization. But it is only in 1946 that he became more famous when the eminent Egyptian writer, Taha Husain introduced him to the public in a series of articles. His comments on Kafka can be conceived as a part of his secularization project. While in the 1960s Kafka achieved a special significance in the Arab world, the east European polemic against him had been more and more exacerbated in the context of the Cold War. Stimulated by those polemics and in the course of the rising Arab anti-Zionism the question of Kafka’s attitude to Zionism arose from 1971 on. As a Jewish writer who was predominantly on the move among the Zionist circles of Prague, his reception became more complicated and difficult after the rise of the Middle East conflict. This study is concerned with the entire history of reception, focusing on the significant contest of Arab intellectuals and beyond to point this reception in context of the modern Arab History of thought. In this respect the study can be considered part of a future-oriented research, which deals with exchange processes, the transfer of ideas, cultural translation, and overlapping and interference between Europe and the Arab area. However, these spheres are not considered opposites. weiterlesen