Studies of Silhouettes

Fiction. Short Stories. Translated by Jacob Siefring. Each of the texts in this work proceed from the fragments and cryptic beginnings found scattered throughout the notebooks Max Brod took possession of after Kafka's death. The results tend to be as variable as they are unexpected: outlines of tales, madcap soliloquies, fairy tale inversions, strange parables, comedic monologues. In some instances a single fragment of Kafka's is reprised multiple times, yielding parallel but divergent texts. Other times, a unique fragment is driven to its logical extreme, or gives way to a dizzying cascade of ab absurdum speculation, and one marvels how the development could have been otherwise. As one might expect, all of Kafka's familiar obsessions--the night and its terrors, the law, justice and its lack, bureaucracy, animals, et cetera--are here in force. Each passage begins in boldface to indicate the hand of the Prague lawyer, before giving way to Senges's liberties.--Jacob Siefring