So far this is pretty damned informative, and of course, Crumb captures the essence of the subject. Superb.

OK, nearly done with this. A good primer to Kafka's life, world and art. Not only covers the topic in a non-pretentious way, but takes some good ribbing at the snobs who succeed in making Kafka no fun. Crumb's imagery is hypnotic. Highly recommended.

I have a newer 2007 edition of this with a better cover: Kafka as drawn by Crumb sitting alone writing at a desk with KAFKA spelled in big whit More...

A wonderful and brilliant introduction to the life and work of Franz Kafka by David Mairowitz and with awesome illustrations by the legendary Robert Crumb. In less the 200 pages it awoke my appetite to read all the wonderful writing of Kafka,and to get into a more profuond and complete book about the life of this genius of world literature. The man who wrote the most famous first sentence in modern literature: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning after disturbing dreams,he found himself transforme More...

I wish goodreads had the cover I have because it is BEAUTIFUL! Black and gray and tan with White and orange lettering and matte. So, so perfectly matte. mmmmmm

The book itself: well the illustrations were, of course, great. but I was disappointed with the content of the book which is a bummer because, as Sarah pointed out when I was on the sidewalk fondling this new purchase "[I] do love a graphic biography". It felt like it was over way too fast and the extended amounts of time spent on Kafka's More...

كتاب رائع يستعرض فيه المؤلف حياة الكاتب النمساوي كافكا بشكل مختصر ويسرد للقارىء بماذا كان يفكر كافكا وكيف كانت حياته وماذا كان يكتب ويجول في خاطره. الجميل في الكتاب هو وجود الرسومات التوضيحية لكثير من الأشياء التي تطرق إليها المؤلف. فعندما يتحدث بإيجاز عن إحدى مؤلفات كافكا, فهناك رسوم مرافقة توضح لك القصة على هيئة "رسوم مصورة" بشكل جذاب وجميل. الكتاب رائع لمن يريد الإستزادة عن كافكا والغوص في أفكاره تمهيداً لقراءة كتبه ورواياته. وأعتبرها بداية جيدة بالنسبة لي لأني أمتلك كتابه الشهير "المسخ" بالل More...

ترجمة رديئة جدا ودون المستوي
ولكن فى وسط كل هذا أجد أكثر ما أكرهه عند الحديث عن كاتب وهوا تلخيص أعماله
أكره تلخيص رواية كاملة فى سطرين
أحب أن يكون الكتاب عن الكاتب وحياته الشخصية وكيف نشأ دون أن تتدخل كالأحمق فى كل سطر محاولا أن تحكي أحدي رواياته

أسعدني قراءة بعض السطور والآراء لكافكا وسط كل هذا الحشو
الكتاب بسيط ولا يأخذ منك وقت فى القراءة
الرسوم كانت مسلية لكنها كانت عامل تشتيت أثناء القراءة
إستمتعت برسائل كافكا إلي النساء وبتلك الشخصية المعقدة وأفكار الروايات والقصص القصيرة التي يخبرك من أين More...

In his diaries, Kafka imagined his demise in many creative ways. For example, razor thin slices of him cut off with a butcher knife. Or being dragged with a noose around his neck.

I believe Max Brod may have had it right when he claimed Kafka's works were part of an elaborate search for an unreachable god. Especially with the inaccessibility of higher authority in The Trial and The Castle.

He was born and lived in Prague all but the last 8 months of his life. He called the city "a little mother" More...

Mine is a Bcn 2010 hardcover Spanish edition. But it's got the same picture on the cover. Review pending ¡Muchísimas gracias Andrew y Eva!
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In English, I believe this book goes under a few different aliases, one of which is ‘Kafka for Beginners’ (the title noted on the copyright page of this 2010 Bcn edition). But surely Kafka isn’t so inaccessible a writer as to need a dummies guide? And although my crusty old 1970s Penguin paperbacks of Kafka’s novels and stories don’t More...

I especially appreciate all the digs at literary critics who are quick to declare things "Kafkaesque" and at the general tendency of lit crits to narrowly classify works. This tendency is partly responsible for reducing Kafka to a commodity and a tourist destination rather than an author for people to read, interpret, and enjoy on their own. While Kafka is certainly not the only author to suffer this fate, his is probably one of the most extreme forms of authorial commercialization. Faulkner als More...

The tragically bizarre, obsessive, pathological, paranoid world of Franz Kakfka’s literature is abundant with descriptively distressful anguish. Much of the artistry of Robert Crumb is equally expressive of the bizarre, obsessive, pathological and paranoid. How apt then to discover a book that poignantly celebrates the extraordinary weirdness of both Kafka and Crumb. (It should, however, in contrast, be emphasized that Kafka had an aversion to sexual intimacy whereas Crumb has had a predispositi More...

Leuk boekje om wat achtergrondinformatie over Franz Kafka op te doen ���n om kennis te maken met een aantal boeken en verhalen van Kafka. Mooie tekeningen, waar in ������n geval Kafka misschien niet zo blij mee zou zijn geweest. Het insect waarin Gregor Samsa is veranderd, mocht van Kafka niet worden afgebeeld. Daar heeft Crumb zich niet aan gehouden, maar dat is misschien ook wat lastig in een Graphic novel.

Het kost, na lezing van deze Graphic novel, geen enkele moeite meer om me voor te stelle More...

David Zane Mairowitz thinks Kafka's writing has insufficient Jewish content, so too much of the text here talks about the Jewish situation in Prague in Kafka's time and adduces a lot of highly questionable and possibly discriminatory ideas about Jewish psychology (really? all of them with the same psychology?) such as self-loathing. Although the cover extracts Kafka's comment, "What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself," and it appears in the text t More...

This book is not only ridiculously accessible, it also has really interesting tidbits of information pertaining to Kafka most people wouldn't even think of. Kafka's writing is so complex and the historical information on Kafka's life as well as judaism, etc. is very informative and actually covers every possible tangent concerning his writing. I took a class on Kafka and we didn't even go over some of the historical information in this book.

Anyone who wants to get into Kafka and get more from hi More...

Fantastic art by my favorite illustrator and great writing by Dave Mairowitz. It was great to see The Metamorphosis, probably the first serious piece of writing I ever read, so well illustrated.

Another point I quite liked was Mairowitz's tying of Kafka to Jewish literature instead of peering at him through the lens of existentialism, absurdism, or any of the other tags that Mairowitz slyly pokes fun at critics attaching to him.

This is a great introduction to the literature and life of Kafka. I' More...

INTRODUCING KAFKA. (1994). David Zane Mairowitz and Robert Crumb. ****.
Believe it or not, this is a serious analysis of Franz Kafka – the man and his works. Crumb’s illustrations to Mairowitz’s text are fitting and, in the main, serious attempts to amplify the meanings of the text. The book starts off with a biographical section on Kafka, his family and his experiences growing up in the ghetto in Prague. It was interesting to see the influence his father had on him and his later writings. The d More...

Dulu, ketika pertama kali membaca 'Metamorphosis' karya Kafka, saya langsung terperangah karena keunikan dan keanehan (can I say this?) gaya berceritanya. Salah satu buku yang takkan pernah terlupa, mungkin sampai saya mati atau pikun. Demikian uniknya Kafka bercerita..

Kafka, merupakan salah satu penulis paling berpengaruh abad ke 20. Saking berpengaruhnya, muncul terminologi 'Kafkaesque' sebagai 'adjective' dalam bahasa Inggris. Terlahir sebagai seorang Yahudi berbahasa Jerman di Prague-Ceko da More...

I received this book for Christmas and started reading it immediately. It is pretty interesting weaving Jewish Czech history with a semi-biography of Kafka and his Jewish upbringing. I don't know how relevant Judaism is to Kafka considering he thought "What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself." Ironically, the book points to the aforementioned quote by Kafka; accusing him of being a "self hating Jew". I don't know if Kafka was trying to distance hi More...

This is one of few books that I found extremely difficult to be reviewed. I am dumbfounded, speechless even mesmerised as if I found a bucket of gold at the end of a rainbow.

A treasure indeed, something that worth enough as the dishes you eat the air you breath and the soil you step on. I embrace it as a lifeline rope being hurled by Crumb and Mairowitz in the middle of confusion how to understand the complicity of the disturbed artist.

I could not recalled him other than an artist. K maybe an More...

I love this series of books, and this volume, accompanied by the evocative illustrations of R. Crumb, is one of the best. This short introduction is probably old news for serious Kafka fans, but I think the authors' presentation of the place Kafka has taken in our culture makes this treatment worth reading (particularly by anyone who has ever turned Kafka into an adjective). I was giddy after seeing a license plate at dinner on NYE in one of Ann Arbor's swankiest restaurants, emblazoned, simply More...

One of my fellow teachers mentioned that R. Crumb had illustrated a graphic novel about the life and works of Franz Kafka. "This is like some unspeakably hideous Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ad" I thought to myself. Two creepy tastes that, do indeed, go great together. My students have been reading Kafka's "Metamorphasis", and so I picked this up to see if the section on that story could helpfully illuminate it for any of my strugglers. Yes, it could, and it did...but I was unprepared for how engro More...

Back when I was a kid there were these comics titled Classics Illustrated. That were comic book versions of classic literature: Moby Dick, The Count of Monte Cristo, Tom Sawyer etc. The drawings weren’t that good, the synopsized storylines didn’t really do justice to the actual books and sometimes the back page, filled with advertisements selling sea monkeys and x-ray glasses, held more interest. Yet when I grew up and actually read the books depicted in these comics, I found I had a fundamental More...

Mairowitz writes and R. Crumb illustrates this fantastic biography of Kafka. Synopses of his major works are interspersed chronologically with his biography, really driving home how Kafka's feelings of alienation and inadequacy shaped his fiction. The ending is weak and seems oddly agenda-driven (in a way that has nothing to do with Kafka); but other than that the analysis is excellent. I'm so glad I own this.

Kafka did not want the insect to be seen. Concerning the cover of the first edition [of More...

Who would have thought the creator of Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat would turn into such an excellent literary historian? Although I believe Crumb was doing his profiles of Blues artists from the beginning, no? Done with the collaboration of David Zane Mairowitz's readable and comprehensive text (the editors might have picked a better font to match up to Crumb's lettering and drawing), this work made me think about even more than connecting back to Kafka's oeuvre. Of course, that would be the pl More...

It has been years since Kafka touched my life. And reading this brilliant summary of the life and work of Franz Kafka brought all of those memories back to me, free of the teenage angst and paranoia that accompanied my first experiences with works like The Trail. I think there is a level on which Kafka can touch people that is really universal. Many of us at least go through a period of feeling alienated from our bodies, our families. Many of us feel spied upon, persecuted for no identifiable re More...

I've never been a huge fan of Crumb's drawing, but someone gave me this book a year or two ago and I realized that the longer I didn't read it, the sillier I would feel.

Half of it is a so-so Kafka biography, and the other half is pretty much a series of cliff's notes on some of the best-known stories and novels. In his defense, Crumb's style lends itself well to pictures of bulging eyes, nervous moles, confused foreheads beaded with sweat, etc, but these plot synopses still manage to feel like a More...

The only fault I can find in this work is that it is much too short.

Not sure it would be a good introduction to Kafka, though it is light and very approachable- but I enjoyed revisiting some of my favorite works treated by the master illustrator, R. Crumb.

There are synopses and highlights from Kafka's major works interwoven in a clear and interesting narration recounting Franz Kafka's life, loves and neuroses.

I think Crumb's style shares much in common with Kafka's and is a good match.

This is an easy, insightful read for one who has little knowledge on Kafka. David Zane Mairowitz, who wrote the text for this book, curiously isn't given credit within this GoodReads listing, only R. Crumb. R. Crumb's illustrations are wonderful (he is genius), however this wouldn't be what it is without Marowitz's breakdown of Kafka's life and books as they relate to the bigger picture. Take away... I've a few more Kafka titles to add to my GoodReads list!

This book was a fantastic read. It actually only took me one afternoon sitting to read it from cover to cover. I am not hugely familiar with R. Crumb or David Zane Mairowitz's work, but will look into more of it because of this book.

I have read a few of Kafka's works, but never really understood his oeuvre as it related to his life.Until this point most of what I knew about Kafka were innuendos and what I learned about him in "Bartelby & Co." regarding his living at home, having a strained More...

I can't think of an a more suitable artist than Robert Crumb to adapt Kafka. Crumb's mixture of neurosis, perfectionism, sexuality and ghoulish detail breathes an eerie light on Franz K's life, his vision and this short sample of his amazing works. Reading this brought back vivid memories of first reading The Metamorphasis, The Trail, and The Collected Stories. I do wish that Crumb had done a complete adaptation of The Trail or The Castle, though. This really makes me want to finish reading The More...

Writings/illustrations about Kafka’s life from beginning to end. Includes bits of his more famous stories supplied with specific biographical context. Makes for a really entertaining and informative read. Kafka’s work has probably been more overanalyzed and misinterpreted than any writer I’ve ever read. Mairowitz is quick to invalidate a lot of these theories and ideas: “Kafka managed to turn his sometimes deliciously-evoked internal terror inside-out – with himself torn and mutilated at its cen More...

I've read a fair portion of Kafka's work, but never quite understood what the fuss was about. Robert Crumb's comic succeeds in highlighting his major works and contextualizing them among the happenings of his life and country. Though this book probably won't enlighten your reading of Kafka - I still don't have a handle on why his appeal is so broad - it is an interesting portrait of the life of an alienated author.