The Blue Octavo Notebooks

The Blue Octavo Notebooks (German: Acht blaue Oktavhefte), sometimes referred to as The Eight Octavo Notebooks, is a series of eight notebooks written by Franz Kafka from late 1917 until June 1919. The name was given to them by Max Brod, 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 selection of 109 entries Betrachtungen über Sünde, Leid, Hoffnung und den wahren Weg [Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope, and the True Way] and included it in the 1931 collection The Great Wall of China. Roberto Calasso published this collection with the title The Zürau Aphorisms in 2006.