Kafka's Manuscript Paperback by Jason Novak

Product Details

• Publisher: Fantagraphics (2025-03-04)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 132 pages
• ISBN-13: 9798875000775
• Item Weight: 187.11 grams
• Dimensions: 17.58 x 12.57 x 0.81 cm

A wordless heist, a fascist regime, a smuggled manuscript of Kafka’s forbidden prose — in this tightly wound, ticking clock of a story, the loot at stake is the absurdist master’s legacy.

With a stylistic nod to the wordless novels of Frans Maserell and the expressionist drawings of Franz Kafka himself, Kafka’s Manuscript begins at Kafka’s deathbed, where he entrusts his friend Max Brod with the task of destroying his unpublished papers. Brod refuses, and what follows is the story of how Kafka’s literary legacy escaped Europe under the shadow of fascism. It is a survey of Kafka’s paranoia in kinetoscopic monochrome, exploring in a new way what countless books about Kafka have previously attempted to explore with words. What better way to capture Kafka’s enduring but evasive voice than with pantomime?

About the Author

Jason Novak is a cartoonist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, the Paris Review, the Rumpus, and the Believer. He lives in Oakland, California.