Franz Kafka (1883–1924)

In today’s world, which feels so much less clear and more upside down to me than the one I used to know, this book seems more prophetic than science fiction. An exploration of the absolute absurdity and uselessness of life and the total breakdown of any sensible justice system, it makes you shiver a bit. Does it make sense to struggle when there are no answers (in fact, not even questions that can be put to anyone other than yourself)? Seeking to understand what is going on around you, show more what is being done to you and what is expected from you is tantamount to insanity, for there are no explanations and no rules that you are allowed to know. There is less justice for those who seek to understand their human predicament, and more leniency for those who just happen to stumble upon the right approach or the right judge. Even the lawyers are clueless, and I don’t even want to try to make sense of how religion fails in this novel.

What, indeed, is K’s crime? It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know what he has done, we don’t know what he has done, but living, alone, is crime enough. There is nothing to believe in in K’s world. If there are higher-ups, he is never able to reach or understand them, in fact they seem to exist in theory only. The only people he ever meets are lowly officials. If the higher powers do exist, are they of any use to him? I wonder how much of what he is saying about “higher powers” is truly Kafka grappling with the concept of God. Other people seem to believe in them, there are rumors that they have done things, made rulings, but K finds no evidence that they exist. Every person K meets is part of the court system, which must mean he is being judged by humanity itself rather than something outside of humanity.

This book is so psychologically dense and complicated that I am sure I only walked away with a fragment of what Kafka was trying to convey. It certainly serves to humble one when encountering the mind that is needed to produce such a story.

However, and this is a big however for me, I hated reading it. It pushed and pulled and stood still. I didn’t care what happened to K except in that larger sense that he seemed to represent mankind--if it can happen to him, it can happen to you. My second Kafka, and I find him far too challenging to enjoy, but important because he makes you think and will not allow you to look the other way.

If I were rating this on any pleasure grid, it would get 1-star from me. But rated on a meaning grid, it probably deserves 5-stars. I have compromised and given it 3.5. show less

Uma terrível viagem psicológica à vida de Josef K., um homem comum que acorda um dia e se vê acusado de um crime que não cometeu, um crime cuja natureza nunca lhe é revelada. Uma vez preso, é libertado, mas deve retornar ao tribunal a uma base regular - uma série de eventos que se mostra enlouquecedora, pois nada é resolvido. À medida em que cresce a incerteza de seu destino, sua vida pessoal - incluindo o trabalho num banco e suas relações com a senhoria e uma jovem mulher que show more mora ao lado - torna-se cada vez mais imprevisível. K. tenta ganhar o controle, mas só consegue acelerar sua própria e excruciante espiral descendente. Dá prova do gênio de Kafka, como um romancista, um humorista, um psicólogo e um humorista, a sua dialética do absurdo, que jamais deixa a peteca da parábola cair. Cada tipo de gesto humano e cada detalhe realista são esmiuçados conforme aquela dialética do absurdo. show less

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Two cult-favorite Japanese artists present eerie graphic adaptations of 9 classic Kafka short stories, with hypnotic illustrations that will appeal to fans of Junji Ito

Franz Kafka’s work is given vivid new life in this collection of manga adaptations of 9 of his greatest stories.

With spectacularly detailed, otherworldly illustrations, the brother-and-sister duo known as Nishioka Kyodai create a haunting, claustrophobic visual world for Kafka’s show more surreal masterpieces.

Features adapted versions of:
The Metamorphosis
A Hunger Artist
In the Penal Colony
A Country Doctor
The Concerns of a Patriarch
The Bucket Rider
Jackals and Arabs
A Fratricide
The Vulture
Among the standouts are "The Metamorphosis" and "A Hunger Artist," which present absorbing moments for their unique art style to offer vivid entry points into Kafka's world and which take the immersion experience to a whole other level.

Story Locale:Kafkaesque Eastern Europe

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is a surreal reading experience. Kafka is, famously, a surrealist author; then one translates his surreality into Japanese, a language that seems to me (a non-speaker) as very surrealism-friendly and pairs it with manga-style illustrations, again a style famously surreal in every particular; and REtranslate the lot into English from Japanese.

...I need a lie-down...

Dizzying as all this sounds as I try to explain it, the reality is more dizzying still. The more I read, the more I felt the odd out-of-body sensation that Kafka induces in me at all times. It was more powerful than usual because the art is so exactly the visual representation of the story that I, a highly visual reader, create for myself when reading Kafka. The "author" named for this manga is actually a pair of siblings...the name is literally Japanese for literally "Nishioka siblings" and are described by Pushkin Press as:
...the brother-and-sister manga duo of Satoshi Nishioka and Chiaki Nishioka. They debuted in the weekly magazine Morning in 1989 and have since produced more than a dozen works and have become well-known for their surreal illustration style and dark psychological themes.
There's no part of that I could argue with. The translator, as one would expect, is:
...a Ph.D. student in Japanese Literature at UCLA, having previously received a B.A. in German Literature and Cultural History from Columbia University. He translates from Japanese, Chinese, and German.
...handily explaining how and why he came to be the one to make this fascinating project come to life. Talk about a rare bird! This is someone who understands the literature and the language of the original, the translation, and the translation of the translation!

...my head hurts...

Look at these images:



If that isn't your inward-eye image of Kafka, I can see it being so wonderfully surreal on its own that it wouldn't matter.

I think the reality-bending nature of a manga adaptation of a translation of a translation would've appealed to Kafka. As a Yule gift, a beautiful item to sit quietly and absorb on #Booksgiving as you sip your chili pepper-infused cocoa beside the meat-draped skeletons of your loved ones' ghosts, makes this an excellent gift. show less

I started reading the Kafka diaries with motive of a trip that took me to the Czech Republic and gave me a chance to spend a few days in Prague by myself. Having been enough times in Prague to want to play the tourist again and feeling a uncontainable need to dig further into Kafka's mind --perhaps motivated by the reading of many works by Enrique Vila-Matas where the Diaries are quoted over and over-- I decided to fetch this book from the public library in Helsinki and let myself get lost show more in the Prague where Kafka spent most of his life. The heat was unbearable during most of these August days, and I walked and sweated more than I managed to read, but the trip and the diaries, both, have turned my understanding of Kafka's genius in a fascinating direction.

A man suffering from a weak phyisical condition that kept him ill more often than not, depriving him from strength for anything that he would deem important; a man who spent restless nights tormented by what he himself considered an unability to actually properly write or to write at all; a man frustrated by his relationship with his family; a man haunted by such a vivid imagination that even his dreams and nightmares would not let him in peace; a man whose relationship with women and sex was so full of contradictions and yet was beyond the intensity that his own body and minde were able to bear: all of this combined in a brief but fruitful span of perhaps 15 years at most is what makes for the violent mix that fueled Kafka's creative genius. How else could, back in the days when Realism predominated literature, turning oneself into a gigant insect-like creature would have been even a possibility, if it wasn't for the uncountable nightmares and dreams of Kafka's nights?

But not only an insight into Kafka's mind is to be found in these diaries. Not only an understanding of his suffering. There are also plenty of wonderful observations of his everyday life. Descriptions so vivid and intense of the most mundane situations that one can only admire: Kafka was not only a genius in his creativity but also in his written accounting of the world. If this was not enough, there are plenty of sketches of what later became full-literary works and many other sketches that, unfinished, unpolished, and all, sometimes even in single paragraphs still account for more literary genius than one can find in entire novels.

The diaries are not easy to read, that must be cleared out. They demand fierce strength and above all, patience with the tormented writer. The many depressing paragraphs can wear one down at times. Yet these diaries deserve careful reading by anyone seriously interested in literature, the mind of a genius, and the origin of anything Kafkaesque. show less