Announcing the winners of the Kafka Undergraduate Essay Prize 2026
We would like to congratulate the winners of the Kafka Undergraduate Essay Prize 2026! This year the theme was ‘Bodies’ and the winning essays were:
Joint First Prize:
Molly Hill (University of Oxford) - 'Bodies beneath the sheets: the bed as an extension of the body in Kafka'
Saskia Maini (University of Oxford) - 'How does Kafka present the trial as a bodily experience in Der Prozess to materialise bureaucratic legal authority?'
Joint Second Prize:
Edward Gledhill (University of Oxford) - 'Kafka’s Bodies: Modernist Conceptions of Humanity in Die Verwandlung'
James Tilley (University of St Andrews) - 'Discuss the use of bodies in the works of Franz Kafka'
About the Competition
The competition is open to undergraduates who are currently enrolled in a course of German (single honours or with another subject) at a university in the UK. All entries are reviewed anonymously by the team of judges at the Oxford Kafka Research Centre.
The winners receive a monetary prize and are invited to a prize-giving ceremony, which this year takes place in Oxford on 25 June.
The Oxford Kafka Research Centre is grateful to Nigel Jones for generously funding this prize.
About the Winners
Molly Hill - Joint First Prize
Molly is a Modern Languages finalist studying German and Russian at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. She has been fascinated by Kafka and his works since she studied Die Verwandlung at A-Level, and has sought every opportunity to explore more.
"The Kafka Essay Competition has been an invaluable experience every year, allowing me space and time to reread my favourite author in a new light, opening my eyes to deeper facets of writing that has formed such an important part of my life."
Saskia Maini - Joint First Prize
Saskia is a student from London reading Modern Languages (German and Italian) at Brasenose College, University of Oxford. She enjoys reading works from across the German literary tradition and exploring the historical and cultural contexts in which they were written.
"The essay gave me the wonderful opportunity to formulate a question raised by Kafka’s writing and the competition’s theme, allowing me to draw connections between the works I had read and to engage more deeply with the secondary literature on the subject."
Edward Gledhill - Joint Second Prize
Edward is a first-year undergraduate from London studying English and German at The Queen’s College, Oxford. His work this year has focussed particularly on modern literature in both languages, and his broader interests include translation, the relationship between poetic form and meaning, and the material histories of texts.
"The Kafka Undergraduate Essay Prize gave me a great chance to explore in greater detail some of the concerns that are central to the modern world—what, external ‘body’ or internal ‘soul’, defines our humanity? How can we write about individual subjective experience in any meaningful way?—and in so doing combine aspects of each of my subjects, in a more developed way than is usually possible as part of normal degree work. I am very grateful to the prize for encouraging this!"
James Tilley - Joint Second Prize
James is currently studying English and German at the University of St Andrews. Having always taken a great interest in literature and the ways people can be moved by stories, he decided to begin learning German during his gap year, being interested in the new perspective offered by a different language. Since then, he has been able to pursue his language learning at St Andrews and has found the process extremely rewarding and engaging.
"Writing on a range of Kafka's works for the essay competition has been a really rewarding challenge and has helped me develop my approach to essay writing."
