I must confess that I am unfamiliar with Kafka's work. My high school didn't teach it. This looked interesting to me & the description said that I, as a Junji Ito fan, should enjoy it, & I did. I would read a story from here & then look up information about the original. Based on what I saw I think this is great. I have wanted to look into Kafka's work & I enjoy this way of doing it.

📕You are never going to able to read Kafka this fast ever again. Not one of his books, but 9 of them!
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📗I really liked the style of illustrations. I loved that how the bug never showed his face in the Metamorphosis. I liked how shadows were used
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📘Maybe 1 or 2 stories lost bit of meaning, but others were tastefully summarized to fit in manga format. It was a different way to experience Kafka!

I enjoyed how the stories by Franz Kafka was enhanced by the simple artwork by Nishioka Kyodai in "Kafka."

The manga presentation takes a collection of Franz Kafka stories and adds imagery that is stark and complementary to the text. It does include some of Kafka's more well known stories. I like that the imagery doesn't try to take over the story. Instead, the story informs the artwork and helps bring out more meaning for the reader. I've read "The Metamorphosis" so many times over the years and the presentation in this book brought out points in the story that I had missed so I appreciated the story anew.

It did get repetitive if I tried to read too many stories in one sitting. I found reading a story or two and then giving time to let it sit before going back to read more was best. That way, the stories and artwork didn't run together. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed this collection a lot.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for making this digital copy available to read in exchange for an honest opinion and I look forward to possibly purchasing a hard copy in the future for my home library.

Thank you for this ARC.
This is a different approach to Kafka and how I read his works in college. A manga approach. A dark approach. Try to understand that the original German can never get the full feel in English. The art work itself will make you connect to the different ideas and the blends of Kafka novellas.
You'll flip from horizontal to vertical and in return. Which makes you feel and internalize the characters and their paths.
I just reviewed Kafka by Nishioka Kyodai. #Kafka #NetGalley

I cannot imagine a better artistic style to represent Kafka's words in a graphical language. It truly captures his spirit in an off-putting, creepy, and quirky way. As with any short story collection, there are bound to be moments that shine and moments that flounder and that is obviously true of this book as well but overall an enjoyable experience.

Honestly, I don't even know how to rate this one! The art was really brilliant, I loved looking at it. But otherwise, it was so confusing. And the prose felt a bit dry. With Kafka, it could have been intentional. It could have been lost in translation. Or it could have been just written like that for some other reason.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance readers copy

I was clearly not the right audience for this and found it very difficult to try to read .the graphics are quite well done but visually they didn’t work for me,

I’m a huge fan of Kafka’s work, so I was very intrigued when I saw there was a manga interpretation of his most iconic short stories. Retelling something like this is always risky, but this daring duo absolutely perfected it.

Retelling nine of his most impactful short stories, including the eternally memorable The Metamorphosis, each one captures the true, claustrophobic and alienating essence of the stories with illustrations that are both uncomfortable and beautiful at the same time, creating surreal and haunting imagery with clear storytelling.

If you’re already a lover of his work, you’ll enjoy this striking reimagining and it's uniquely dark art style; and if you’re looking for a new way to experience a classic for the first time this is a perfect way to try these stories in a new and engaging format. At times the visuals may be slightly inaccessible but overall it’s very easy to read and the entire book is very clearly a masterful work of art.

I think you're either really going to enjoy this or really hate it. I'm happy to say that I'm in the former camp. It was thoroughly enjoyable and witty.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC, however, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was interesting to say the least. I really liked the art style and found it to be fascinating, however, I have to admit that I didn't especially enjoy the stories themselves. I hadn't actually read anything by Kafka before. I was hoping that this would motivate me to start, however, it didn't exactly motivate me. I'm still a little curious, but I have to say that I don't think I will be reading it anytime soon. I am, however, curious about finding more from Nishioka Kyodai.

I’ve taught the short fiction of Franz Kafka in a senior-level HS English course for years—and I’ve seen several attempts to render his spare, mysterious, and evocative prose into graphic novels. Some attempts are very prescriptive, telling the reader exactly what to think and how to imagine Kafka’s world. What I appreciated about this volume is that Nishioka Kyodai’s images are elliptical and mysterious, suggesting a world without fully rendering it, allow the reader to imagine and create, much as when reading Kafka’s work in prose form. I thought this was a unique and engrossing attempt at reimagining many of Kafka’s most iconic stories.

Very Kafka, loved the art style. Felt it was very in theme with Kafka's way of questioning realities. A good homage to the author.

This is a short story collection of Franz Kafka’s works depicted as a graphic novel by Nishioka Kyōdai. There is a quality to Kafka’s works which lends itself to the term “Kafkaesque” most of all - the quality of a world with apathy towards absurdity, of which Kafka’s main character is often suffering. Often this quality is shown through undefined characters or central features of the story. For instance, the main character of Metamorphosis isn’t quite turned into a cockroach - that’s just how most readers attribute him; at least, the readers who feel a need to identify him. In the text, however, he is just a bug of senseless creation and therefore senseless identity. To take Kafka’s work, which lacks this determined visual nature to it and intend to capture it all the same, is an interesting feat. How Kyōdai chooses to depict Metamorphosis in this regard is brilliant. The first short story tackled addresses that very feeling in an item, the Odradek, which is explained by Kafka in quite painstaking detail and yet indescribable without so many words and still without purpose. This feels like a similar artistic drive to that of Magritte’s, one of my favorite artists, who created Treachery of Images. Magritte pokes at the difference between words titling an object and the object itself - a pipe is only a pipe because you say it is, so to say. As is the Odradek only undefinable and useless because of our determination. How Kafka-esque, and how apt a way to poke at his work’s finest quality, “The entire form appears useless, yet somehow complete.” I find a stronger connection in the art style to Edward Gorey’s work than Junji Ito, as it was referenced in the provided summary. Like Gorey’s work, this book has dense, static backgrounds that feel claustrophobic at times, capturing the industrial influence in Modernist works effectively. While Ito’s work would accurately capture the industrial influence, as well, the lithographic appearance of both Gorey and Kyōdai’s work here help to place the stories in Kafka’s time. I found the stories to be appropriately retold, but I would still recommend readers to Kafka’s writing before picking this up. Kafka is a favorite author of mine, and I chose this ARC with glee - it is truly a phenomenal rendition of his works.

A book full of eerie and intriguing art work that adds a new layer for engaging with the short stories of Franz Kafka. The versions of The Vulture and The Bucket Knight were my favourites.

This is a book that:
* Offers the perfect crossover between early twentieth century literature and graphic novels
* Could be read and re-read
* Had captivating art work that was the ideal companion to the author’s stories

Note: if the version you read is printed in the original Japanese format, read from RIGHT to left!

Highly recommend!

I picked this up because I thought it would be an easy introduction to Kafka's work. I was wrong. I had only read the Metamorphosis before picking up this graphic novel adaptation, but I don't think Kafka's work translates well to the format. His work is bizarre to say the least, and due to the graphic novel's lack of, well, words it makes the stories even more confusing and hard to follow. I also don't think the art style worked well, either. The art is interesting on its own, but it doesn't work for a graphic novel, and especially THIS graphic novel.

3.5
I didn't love all the stories but thats more of a critic on Kafka and now Kyodai. My favorite story though was the bucket because it was just so funny. My biggest critic about the book is that the text thats written sideways is very hard to read, but also I read this on my computer and i'm sure its much better on paper.

Two cult-favorite Japanese writers present eerie graphic adaptations of 9 classic Kafka short stories, with hypnotic illustrations that will appeal to fans of Junji Ito.

This was fine. I would have preferred actual Junji Ito over the wish.com brand.

First of all I really appreciated the idea of modern classics like this to be adapted into an easier and more digestible form to read as a graphic novel. I’m not familiar with this publisher but after this, I am interested in discovering more from them. The illustrations are soo gorgeous???? I think not only is it gorgeous It also really fits the stories. As someone not familiar with Kafka’s works, this one was a great starter to start reading their books. However, I do think it makes it harder for me to digest the content and I think I would understand this better if I have read Kafka previously. Maybe I’ll try reading his works first and I’ll come back to reread this one.

Thank you to Pushkin Press and NetGalley.

I was first drawn to this book by its description and eye-catching cover (whoever says that you can't judge a book by its cover doesn't understand its importance as a marketing tool).
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I've read a number of Kafka's short stories many years ago, and the prospect of seeing them given life in a graphic adaptation piqued my interest, especially when Junji Ito, whose adaptations and art style I appreciate, got a personal shout-out. I wouldn't say he's the first illustrator I thought of, reading this book; rather, it has an art style and claustrophobic aesthetic that reminded me of Coraline.
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Now, on to the book: I don't think I can say much about the actual stories and the text, since not only it's adapted and abridged from the original German, but it is also translated two times - once from German to Japanese and then from Japanese to English. The translator notes in the afterword that his difficulty was three-fold, because not only he had to work within the abridged material while trying to decide which version of the story he should stay loyal to and which to consider the original version to translate, but he also had to work with the illustration and panels on the pictorial front. I was impressed by David Yang's efforts to mantain a balance between these realities and adapting them to a Western audience. </br>
One thing that I didn't appreciate was how the text frames, built for Japanese text, which sometimes can be written vertically, inhibited Yang's translations so much that he took the stylistic choice of writing "vertically" as well, turning the text 90° - meaning the reader has to turn the book or the device sideways to be able to read. I'm sure I can't fault this only on him, since the book wasn't written for Western consumption as its first goal, but I can't help but compare it to other manga translations where this problem doesn't seem to exist, or is dealt with in different ways.
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The short story i was most curious to see adapted was, of course, <i>The Metamorphosis</i>, and I was not disappointed: in accordance to Kafka's wishes, the creature is never shown, thus only "seen" through the eyes of Samsa's family and the lodgers, making his presence (and his existence) known only in relation to the objects he interacts with, like the bed and bedsheet, the picture on the wall, and the food in increasing states of decay.</br>
I really liked Nishioka Satoshi's interpretation of the source material: he see's Kafka's stories as tales about hunger and power, with the obvious <i>A Hunger Artist</i> as a pioneer of this view, but it can be seen as well in <i>The Bucket Rider</i> and <i>The Vulture</i>. In <i>THe Metamonphosis</i> food is without a doubt the way Grete uses to exert power over her brother.
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Other short-stories shine for their graphics; the style in the illustration of people remains the same all throughout the collection, but the difference can be seen in the panels for each one, and in their constant change they gives further meaning to the original text.</br>
I particularly appreciated the contrast in the sequencing of certain stories: <i>Jackals and Arabs</i> is characterised by sinuous and surreal images, a reminder of the mirages of the desert, where by the end all the jackals seem to morph into one as the lines between each one is blurred; after that we're hit by the cobblestoned panels of a town in <i>A Fraticide</i>, where the pages themselves seem to fill the page in an architectural quality, the horror vacui of full illustrations giving a claustrophobic ambience to a murder scene. The latter is furter contrasted by the empty spaces of <i>The Vulture</i>, featurless except for the three characters, where everything seems suspended in a dream.</br>
Another graphic device I appreciated is the central box used in <i>A Hunger Artist</i>, always framed by the illustration of the outside world as it physically and metaphorically keeps the artist in his cage.
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The book is a quick read and packs a powerful punch, I would definitely recommend it to fans of Kafka and of surreal and cosmic horror, it's a 3.5 rating for me!

For some reason Kafka's Metamorphosis was assigned reading for English class in freshman, junior AND senior year of high school - I couldn't believe how many times we had to read it! I don't think I've read it since then so I was hoping from the cover art and description that this graphic adaptation would be a novel way of looking at a familiar work.

In some ways, this is true. Kyodai's images are definitely odd and bizarre in a very Kafka-esque manner. I actually think the black and white (something I normally strongly dislike in graphic novels) feels appropriate for these stories. I guess I'm just a little disappointed that there wasn't a stronger adaptation/interpretation. There's so much text within the panels - I'm pretty sure quoted directly from Kafka - that it felt almost like an illustrated version of Kafka's stories, rather than a graphic novel adaptation and retelling (which is what I expected).

I admit that Kafka's stories are... weird... so there were quite a few stories in here where I felt like I missed the point. I'm pretty sure this is likely due to the actual source content, and not the visuals from Kyodai. My favorite story (by far) was the The Bucket Rider.

It was an easy read, but I don't necessarily think this is the best place to start if you aren't already familiar (and perhaps also a fan) of Kafka.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin press for the free eARC!