A Hunger Artist - Softcover

Kafka, Franz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1479422428 ISBN 13: 9781479422425

Publisher: Wildside Press, 2025

Synopsis

A Hunger Artist is a haunting short story by Franz Kafka that explores themes of isolation, artistic struggle, and the search for meaning. The tale follows a performer who achieves fame through his extreme fasting exhibitions, yet remains unfulfilled as society loses interest in his suffering. Blending allegory with Kafka's signature surrealism, this story examines the limits of human endurance and the cost of uncompromising dedication.

About this title

Review

"Kafka's sirens are silent. Perhaps for Kafka music and singing are an expression or at least a token of escape, a token of hope which comes to us from that intermediate world - at once unfinished and commonplace, comforting and silly - in which the assistants are at home. Kafka is like the lad who set out to learn what fear was. He has got into Potemkin's palace and finally, in the depths of its cellar, has encountered Josephine, the singing mouse ..." -- Walter Benjamin

About the Author

Franz Kafka was born to Jewish parents in Bohemia in 1883. Kafka s father was a luxury goods retailer who worked long hours and as a result never became close with his son. Kafka s relationship with his father greatly influenced his later writing and directly informed his Brief an den Vater (Letter to His Father). Kafka had a thorough education and was fluent in both German and Czech. As a young man, he was hired to work at an insurance company where he was quickly promoted despite his desire to devote his time to writing rather than insurance. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote a great number of stories, letters, and essays, but burned the majority of his work before his death and requested that his friend Max Brod burn the rest. Brod, however, did not fulfill this request and published many of the works in the years following Kafka s death of tuberculosis in 1924. Thus, most of Kafka s works were published posthumously, and he did not live to see them recognized as some of the most important examples of literature of the twentieth century. Kafka s works are considered among the most significant pieces of existentialist writing, and he is remembered for his poignant depictions of internal conflicts with alienation and oppression. Some of Kafka s most famous works include The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Publication date: 2025
• ISBN 10: 1479422428
• ISBN 13: 9781479422425
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 24