The anniversaries being celebrated in this fourth edition of the 42 Festival include 25 years of Matrix, 50 years of Pedrolo’s Mecanoscrit, the centenary of Jordi Sarsanedas’s birth, and the small-format tributes to Shirley Jackson and Ursula K. Le Guin, but naturally, this 2024 we couldn’t overlook one of the greatest authors of the 20^th century and one who defies all comparison: Franz Kafka, who died in Kierling on 3 June 1924. A century after his death, with “Kafkaesque” part of the lexicon and The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle constantly being re-interpreted, determining how much of his oeuvre is fantastic, realistic, grotesque or metaphoric is still no simple task. To help us, we’ve turned to one of the great Kafka experts, Barcelona professor David Roas, who will build on this perspective to analyse the legacy of the Czech author, whom he’s paid tribute to in books such as Distorsiones [Distortions] and La estrategia del koala [The Koala’s Strategy]. The goal is not so much to address the trivial matter of codes and genres, but rather to capture the essence of Kafka. After all, he’s the author who best taught us that reality is anything but, well, real.

Speaker:

David Roas