Award-winning comics artist Peter Kuper has been adapting Franz Kafka’s stories into graphic novels since the graphic genre was new. For Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories, Kuper cites as a visual influence German Expressionism, the deeply etched and angular style that was contemporary with Kafka. For the text, Kuper recruited a friend to pen a fresh translation, closer to the author’s intentions than some recently minted renditions. Kafka’s stories are dark and well suited for the black and white of Kafkaesque, yet, as Kuper reminds us, humor flickers through the darkness.
