The character K, who often appears in Eun Hee-kyung's novels, is usually Kafka's initial "K," and one of Haruki Murakami's famous novels is also called "Kafka on the Beach." It is a part that tells the admiration of the writers.
World literature artists metaphor Yan Lianker as "China's Kafka" and Sadek Hedayat as "Iran's Kafka." The adjective "Kafkaesque" (Kafkaesque) is even listed in the English dictionary. Poet Heo Soo-kyung wrote, "When I wake up from a sleep that seems to continue forever/ I will become a transparent worm." (Poetry 'Kafka Weather 1'). Poet Kim Haeng-sook wrote, "Mr. Kafka, hide me, your darkness is wide enough" (listen to Mr. Kafka).
Franz Kafka (1883-1924). The eternal name marked the 100th anniversary of its death on the 3rd. The name of Kafka, who died at the young age of 40, leaving behind countless manuscripts, is constantly evolving in the history of world literature. In Korea, books commemorating the 100th anniversary of Kafka are pouring in. According to the literary publishing world on the 2nd, more than 10 Kafka works and related books have been published this year alone.
First, the eye-catching book is "The Paintings of Franz Kafka", compiled by Aldreas Kilcher. It is a 370-page book published by collecting Kafka paintings as a "visual artist" rather than a novelist. It is a book that Kilcher sews a sketch of Kafka, which received the manuscript after being asked by Kafka to "burn the manuscript," but was kept by Max Brot, who eventually released the manuscript to the world and held it in the reader's hand.
The book contains Kafka's individual drawings, a diary written in a 手, and a self-portrait drawn by himself. In particular, Kafka drew strange figures with pencils and achromatic pens, and Kafka's readers recall the silhouette of someone in his novel.
Franz Kafka: Known or Secret is a book published by the Small Specialization Foundation to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Kafka's death. It is a translation of a book by two Czech artists, Radek Mali and Renata Puccikova. The book traces Kafka's life and literature, in which the sentence "Essentially, Kafka has been at odds with this world, and the world is still at odds with him" accurately expresses Kafkaesk. This is because most of Kafka's works, such as "Transformation," "Lawsuits," and "Sung," were derived from conflicts between individuals and the world and confusion.
Currently, if you go to Sojeon Seorim in Cheongdam-dong, Seoul, you can also see the first edition of Kafka's flagship work "Transformation" for free.
Na Nam Publishing's "Kafka, Kafka" is a collection of poems by Kim Hye-soon and Seungho Choi poets such as "Going to Work" and "Running" and novels by Kim Haeng-sook and Lee Ki-ho. Kim Tae-hwan, a professor of reading at Seoul National University, wrote in the book, "In the Kafka world, even if chaos comes, it does not break order, but chaos permeates into order, and chaos and order maintain a strange coexistence state." Shin Hyung-cheol, a literary critic, then cites Adorno's article "Kafka Drawing" and mentions the "closed principles" contained in the Kafka novel.
The revised and new editions of Kafka's existing books are also ready to meet readers with a new mind. Minumsa and Kyobo Bookstore recently published "The Essential: Franz Kafka." It is a book that combines Kafka short stories such as "The Missing", "Children on the Countryside Road", and "Taking off the Mask of the Scammers". In addition, Munhakdongne published the "Missing Person" as the world literature collection No. 236 in November last year, and this month, the "transformation and fasting clown" as the world literature collection No. 247.
Wisdomhouse has published a book, "accidental misfortune," which combines 55 Kafka short stories. It is also necessary to remember Professor Jeon Young-ae's translation "A Sudden Start," which was published in the first half of last year and ranked first in the overall bestseller list for a while.
Online bookstore Aladdin has launched a promotion that offers eco-bags when you buy one of Kafka's hundreds of books. Several bookstores, including Aladdin, are enticing readers with Kafka's most famous words, which he left behind in his lifetime.
"A book must be an axe to break the frozen sea in us" (written by Franz Kafka in a letter to his friend Oscar Pollock on January 27, 1904)
[Reporter Kim Yutae]
