They are selected from his writing in Zürau in West Bohemia (now Siřem [cs] in the community of Blšany, Czech Republic) where, suffering from tuberculosis, he stayed with his sister Ottla.

Brod titled the book "Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den wahren Weg" (Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way).

After he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in August 1917, in order to recover, Kafka moved for a few months to the Bohemian village of Zürau, where his sister Ottla worked on the farm of her brother-in-law Hermann.

[3] These aphorisms were first published in 1931 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, under the title Brod had chosen: "Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den wahren Weg" (Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way).

"[2] Reiner Stach remarks: "Much remains fragmentary: again and again, scattered sentences that trail off into nothingness, between them formulations that erupt like aphorisms, imagistic and compelling, once more interrupted by searching motions, diffuse and breaking off unmediated — which Kafka rigidly separates from each other with slashes.