Reviewing Nishioka Kyodai’s Kafka: A Manga Adaptation

I’m a Kafkahead, or a monstrous vermin, as we Kafkaheads call each other.

Pushkin Press released a collection of eleven Kafka stories adapted to manga by the artist Nishioka Kyodai.

This book marks Nishioka Kyodai’s first English translation, and I hope more English translations come out someday. Kyodai is a pseudonym for a brother (writer) and sister (illustrator) who have been publishing surreal manga since 1989 about things like wonder laboratories, sadness, and hell.

And who is Kafka?

Who is K.?

Who am I?

These are all big questions befitting big text.

Kafka is arguably the most influential European author of the 20th century. He’s a serious author, often considered depressing, but the real heads know his work is funny. Kafka is paranoid, sad, strange, weird, and unforgettable.

Kyodai’s illustration style is a perfect match: unnerving faces, thin lines, and abstractions on top of unconventional panel layouts with densely inked background patterns. Many of their pages remind me of paintings, quilts, and mandellas.

The illustrators hold Kafka in high regard. The collection includes an essay where the author explains resisting the idea of adapting “The Metamorphosis” because Kafka objected to visualizing Samsa’s transformation.

We often think of the monstrous vermin as a cockroach because of visual adaptations. It’s not necessarily a cockroach. Instead, Kyodai uses isometric room drawings to portray Gregor as a looming absence in the Samsa family.

“A Vulture” is the source of the collection’s cover image. The description of the man becoming a puddle (see above) of darkness when observed by the vulture is strangely relatable. The vulture’s facial expression is rendered so perfectly.

“The Country Doctor” appears, and so must the young boy’s wound. The doctor’s happenstance is bizarre when illustrated as stick figures in a bed.

What a wound!

I thought the collection’s boldest choice came in “The Concerns of a Patriarch,” also translated as “The Cares of a Family Man.” Check out Wikipedia. That Adorandak can mean anything! The illustrators choose to visualize the Adorandak as a Star of David.

“The Hunger Artist” in 2023 hits differently. As we all deal with our own planned obsolescence: getting replaced by AIs, overseas contractors, or austerity. Life can feel like wasting away in a cage of our own making.

“In The Penial Colony” reads prescient in 2023, a story about a horrible colonial island where the military officials subject themselves to an arcane torture device.

I immensely enjoyed this collection, and if you like surreal Japanese comics like Junji Ito or contemporary art comics like Michael DeForge, this is up your alley. Heck, if you’ve never experienced the joys of Kafka, this is a fine place to start.

Kafka: A Manga Adapatation
By Nishioka Kyōdai
Pushkin Press, 2023

Thank you Pushkin Press and NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for a review.