The Greatest Hope

Written by Mrs. Kafka, or Kafka the woman of German literature, as critic Ilse Aichinger called her, the novel The Greatest Hope was ranked among the 100 most beautiful books of the 20th century.

Little Elena wants to go to America, where her mother has already fled. America is “the greatest hope” for everyone who wants to escape, before it is too late. But Elena needs a visa. She is only eleven years old. It is wartime. Travel is no longer allowed. Children are left alone with their “wrong” Jewish grandparents; no one wants to play with them. They cannot even attend public schools like other children. Their playground is the cemetery. Over the three years of Elena’s life in the book, the reader experiences the great events of World War II through the feelings, dreams, unnatural games, fear and hope of a child living in Vienna under Nazi ideology.

The novel “The Greatest Hope” magically tells us that a person should never lose faith and dreams, and that the sky will one day simply be blue…