Sir John Malcolm Sabine Pasley was a literary scholar and Fellow of the British Academy, renowned for his dedicated work in publishing the writings of Franz Kafka. Following extensive negotiations, he personally took possession of Kafka's manuscripts that had been entrusted to Max Brod. In 1961, Pasley facilitated the transport of these significant literary works from Switzerland to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. His scholarly efforts were instrumental in preserving and disseminating Kafka's unique literary legacy.
The central theme of this collection of essays is the basic tension in Nietzsche, and so in his work, between the urge to weave a satisfying web out of reality and the equally strong compulsion to expose its painful truths.