Kafkaesque : from Jorge Luis Borges to Primo Levi, ten writers who translated Kafka and transformed twentieth-century literature / Maïa Hruska ; translated from the French by Sam Taylor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hruska, Maïa, 1991- author.

Contributor:

Taylor, Sam, 1970- translator.

Standardized Title:

Dix versions de Kafka. English http://id.loc.gov/resources/hubs/a1c2eb73-98d6-c013-2fe1-5f4d300b086e

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924--Translations--History and criticism.

Kafka, Franz.

Genre:

Literary criticism.

Physical Description:

256 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Ecco edition.

Other Title:

10 writers who translated Kafka and transformed 20th century literature

Place of Publication:

New York : Ecco, [2026]

Language Note:

In English, translated from the French.

Summary:

A lively inquiry into a literary genius, the translators who immortalized him, and what it means to cultivate a rich inner life in turbulent times. "What happens to a writer's work when it is translated-specifically, what happens if his name is Franz Kafka?" In Kafkaesque, Ma̐a Hruska traces the strange, shape-shifting legacy of one of literature's most elusive figures--not through traditional biography but through the lives of his earliest and most influential translators. With rigor and ̌lan, she shows us how our understanding of Kafka is inevitably filtered through these voices, many of whom were, or would become, major writers and thinkers in their own right. Jorge Luis Borges rendered Kafka into Spanish, recognizing in him a fellow architect of the infinite. Primo Levi used the German he acquired in a concentration camp to bring The Trial into Italian despite the "psychoanalytic repulsion" he felt toward Kafka. Bruno Schulz published his Polish edition of the same novel before being shot by a Nazi officer. Vladimir Nabokov annotated The Metamorphosis in exile, having undergone his own transformation-from native to foreigner. Milena Jesensk̀, Kafka's great love, translated him into Czech, a language he was both surrounded by and estranged from. What emerges across these essays isn't just a portrait of a legendary writer and his translators but also a portrait of the twentieth century itself--its fractures and displacements, its aesthetic revolutions, its ethical crises. Part cultural history, part group biography, Kafkaesque is a dazzling meditation on language, identity, and the irreducible strangeness of reading and being read. " -- Provided by publisher.

Notes:

"Originally published as Dix versions de Kafka in France in 2024 by Éditions Grasset."

Includes bibliographical references.

Other Format:

Online version Hruska, Maïa, 1991- Kafkaesque

ISBN:

9780063486249

0063486245

OCLC:

1572370181