An original, inventive new biography of Franz Kafka - and his readers

An Economist Best Book of 2024 'A high-spirited, richly informed, and original portrait, a cross between biography, literary analysis and a study in modern canonisation: Karolina Watroba is an inspired guide and her book a pleasure to read.' Marina Warner 'A rich account of what modern readers have made of Kafka' Observer Franz Kafka was one of the most influential, and enigmatic, writers of the twentieth century. His books, with their mysterious courts and monstrous insects, have had an influential reach across literature, music, art and film. But who, exactly, was Franz Kafka? Karolina Watroba tells Kafka's story beyond the boundaries of language, time and space, travelling 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 is a non-chronological journey through Kafka's life, drawing together literary scholarship with the responses of his readers through time. It is a both an exploration of Kafka's life and an exciting new way of approaching literary history.

"Published to mark the centenary of Kafka's death, this is an inventive biography that presents the absurdist master as a writer for our times" - New Statesman

"Bright, accessible and chatty, Watroba's book holds Kafka up to the light to reveal fragments of his elliptical appeal" - The List

"Animated ... admirable ... takes the reader from Oxford to Berlin, Prague to Tel Aviv, and China to South Korea" - Literary Review

"A rich account of what modern readers have made of [Kafka] ... This deft and generous book finds room not only for the many sides of him but for a whole smörgåsbord of legacies and afterlives that explode the cliché of the Kafkaesque" - Observer