Metamorphoses In search of Franz Kafka

Karolina Watroba, 1992-

Book - 2024

"In 2024, exactly one hundred years after his death at the age of forty, readers all over the world will reach for the works of Franz Kafka. Many of them will want to learn more about the enigmatic man behind the classic books filled with mysterious courts and monstrous insects. Who, exactly, was Franz Kafka? Karolina Watroba, the first Germanist ever elected as a fellow of Oxford's All Souls College, will tell Kafka's story beyond the boundaries of language, time, and space, traveling from the Prague of Kafka's birth through the work of contemporary writers in East Asia, whose award-winning novels are, in part, homages to the great man himself. Metamorphoses presents a non-chronological journey through Kafka's li...fe, combining literary scholarship with the responses of his readers throughout the last century. It is a both an exploration of Kafka's life and an exciting new way of approaching literary history"--

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Subjects
Genres
Literary criticism
Published
New York : Pegasus Books 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Karolina Watroba, 1992- (author)
Edition
First Pegasus Books cloth edition
Physical Description
248 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-239) and index.
ISBN
9781639366712
  • Prologue: What Makes Kafka Kafka
  • 1. Oxford: English Kafka
  • Migrations
  • Locked Out of the Library
  • Kafka's Manuscripts
  • Precious Like Papyrus
  • Pandemic Read
  • Kafka and Coronavirus
  • Kafka and Brexit
  • 2. Berlin: German Kafka
  • Siegfried Doesn't Get It
  • Somebody Else Doesn't Get It Either
  • So You Want People to Know Kafka Wrote in German?
  • A Tale of Many Plaques
  • Circus Rider on Two Horses
  • A German Education
  • On a Ttain Across the German Lands
  • Vienna and Berlin
  • Kafka's Doll
  • Readers on Standby
  • 3. Prague: Czech Kafka
  • Into the Kafkorium
  • Transformations and Retransformations
  • 'Grant Him a Permanent Visa!'
  • Kafka Returns
  • From Cafe Louvre to Café Slavia
  • The Breakthrough and the Bridge
  • Father and Son
  • Another Son, Another Father
  • Readers' Judgement
  • Tale Without End
  • I Came A Long Way to Discover a Poor Substitute for Your Company
  • 4. Jerusalem: Jewish Kafka
  • Jewish Readers' Kafka
  • Kafka and Zionism
  • Kafka's Jewishness
  • From Yiddish to Hebrew
  • Hebrew Notebooks
  • The Hebrew Notebook
  • Writing the Body
  • Reading Trials
  • Travelling On
  • The Stakes of Travel
  • 5. Seoul: Asian Kafka
  • Kafka Arrives in East Asia
  • Polar Bear Reads Kafka
  • The Animal Artist and Her Message
  • Kafka's Message Reaches Korea
  • A 'Writers' Writer'
  • Kafkaesque Korean Wave?
  • Kafka the Feminist
  • Milena, Milena, Ecstatic
  • Korean-Mongolian-German-Czech
  • Coda: Kafka in the Cloud
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgements
  • Index
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A celebration of Franz Kafka focusing on how his readership and reception have evolved. The majority of Kafka's oeuvre was published posthumously, and some important novels were never even finished. His legacy was established after his death by a widening critical readership who found his strange stories pliable enough to become a metaphor for just about anything. Today, we view his work in countless ways: surrealist, existentialist, a critique of totalitarianism, a record of the Jewish experience, even feminist social commentary. Explaining that Kafka's stories "invite rewritings and afterlives," Watroba, author of Mann's Magic Mountain, aims to track their shapeshifting splendor. "As readers," she explains, "we regularly see a reflection of our own times, our own crises, in the books we particularly value, especially those that seem pregnant with nebulous metaphorical meaning." Watroba's studies take the form of a travelogue as she searches for "Kafka's metamorphoses around the world," and she strikes a clever balance between contemporary connections and scholarly research. She combines a visit to Kafka's manuscripts in Oxford with a discussion of Ian McEwan's recent Brexit-themed novella The Cockroach. Watroba's visit to Prague tracks locations from Kafka's diaries and includes a stop at "The World of Franz Kafka, one of Prague's lowest-rated attractions on TripAdvisor." A section on Kafka's Jewish roots will thrill aficionados, as Watroba translates selections from his yet-to-be-published writings in Hebrew. She ends her journey in Seoul, where she astutely considers Kafka as a "secret agent of the 'Korean wave'" in literature and film, citing his influence in Park Chan-wook's film Oldboy, among other works. Although some readers may lament Watroba's circumvention of a chronological biography, it's a pleasure to travel with her as she illuminates the global circuitry of what it means to be Kafkaesque today. An astute modern take on Kafka's importance, published on the centenary of his death. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.