Long fascinated with the work of Franz Kafka, Peter Kuper began illustrating his stories in 1988. Initially drawn to the master’s dark humor, Kuper adapted the stories over the years to plumb their deeper truths. Kuper’s style deliberately evokes Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel, contemporaries of Kafka whose wordless novels captured much of the same claustrophobia and mania as Kafka’s tales. Working from new translations of the classic texts, Kuper has reimagined these iconic stories for the twenty-first century, using setting and perspective to comment on contemporary issues like civil rights and homelessness.

Introduction: Kuperesque -- Trip into the mountains -- A little fable -- The helmsman -- The spinning top -- The burrow -- Give it up! -- Coal-bucket rider -- A hunger artist -- A fratricide -- The trees -- Before the law -- The bridge -- In the penal colony -- The vulture.