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Book details

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ecco
Publication date

May 12, 2026
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.93 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0063486245
ISBN-13

978-0063486249

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A lively inquiry into a literary genius, the translators who immortalized him, and what it means to cultivate a rich inner life in turbulent times

"What happens to a writer's work when it is translated–specifically, what happens if his name is Franz Kafka?"

In Kafkaesque, Maïa Hruska traces the strange, shape-shifting legacy of one of literature’s most elusive figures—not through traditional biography but through the lives of his earliest and most influential translators. With rigor and élan, she shows us how our understanding of Kafka is inevitably filtered through these voices, many of whom were, or would become, major writers and thinkers in their own right.

Jorge Luis Borges rendered Kafka into Spanish, recognizing in him a fellow architect of the infinite. Primo Levi used the German he acquired in a concentration camp to bring The Trial into Italian despite the “psychoanalytic repulsion” he felt toward Kafka. Bruno Schulz published his Polish edition of the same novel before being shot by a Nazi officer. Vladimir Nabokov annotated The Metamorphosis in exile, having undergone his own transformation–from native to foreigner. Milena Jesenská, Kafka’s great love, translated him into Czech, a language he was both surrounded by and estranged from.

What emerges across these essays isn’t just a portrait of a legendary writer and his translators but also a portrait of the twentieth century itself—its fractures and displacements, its aesthetic revolutions, its ethical crises. Part cultural history, part group biography, Kafkaesque is a dazzling meditation on language, identity, and the irreducible strangeness of reading and being read.

Review

"Rarely, if ever, have I read a book about translation so insightful, so wide-ranging, so romantic, so hard-hitting. Maïa Hruska and Sam Taylor have created a wonder" - Polly Barton, author of Fifty Sounds

“The explorations in “Kafkaesque” are ranging and free-associative… It is poignant that Ms. Hruska’s book ends with a literal romance blooming from the act of translation.”

- the Wall Street Journal

"An elegant reflection on how the act of translation itself brings about Kafkaesque diversions … offers poignant reflections on the Europe of yesteryear and its legacy today" - Times Literary Supplement

"Freewheeling and often fascinating … a thoughtful, digressive and at times sensuous production. It thrives on Kafka’s sheer variety" - Literary Review

About the Author

Born to a Czech-French family in 1991, Maïa Hruska was raised in Germany and now lives in London, working in publishing as the head of legal at the Wylie Agency. She’s fluent in Czech, French, German, and English. Kafkaesque is her first book.

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From the Publisher

Product information

Publisher	Ecco
Publication date	May 12, 2026
Language	‎English
Print length	272 pages
ISBN-10	0063486245
ISBN-13	978-0063486249
Item Weight	‎12.2 ounces
Dimensions	5.5 x 0.93 x 8.25 inches
Best Sellers Rank	#41,573 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #3 in Translation Reference #21 in European Literary History & Criticism #111 in European Literature (Books)