Completely Kafka: A Comic Biography

Written and Illustrated by Nicolas Mahler
Translated by Alexander Booth

"If you are Nicolas Mahler, the writer and illustrator of a short but engaging graphic biography of the man, you’d see [Kafka] as a sort of blob of hair and eyebrows on a stick. The illustrations of Completely Kafka may look rudimentary, but they work. In fact they’re similar in style to the doodles Kafka himself would make in his notebooks."—Spectator

"Much the best thing about the book are the charming black and white drawings. The best are the drawings of Kafka himself, drawn in thick brushstroke. Some are like cartoons, a few are more like Kafka’s own drawings, angular, isolated."—Jewish Chronicle

A delightfully witty and original graphic biography of Kafka, published to coincide with the centenary of the author’s death

The young Franz Kafka has too many fears to name. Mirrors, clothing, his own body, almost everything causes him to fret. How did this ‘anxious and small bundle of bones’ become one of the world’s great writers?

With telling details and sharply minimal illustrations, Nicolas Mahler tells a wickedly funny story of the development of Kafka’s genius, offering a tribute that is as playful as it is profound.

Paperback
128 pages  
Pushkin Press, 2024
5.35 x 8.44 inches
ISBN 9781805331582
Biography, Historic Graphic Novel