​Three things to know about Kafka. First, his friend asked him if he believed in a spiritual world, and Kafka replied that he thought there was only one world, and then added that the one world he was thinking of WAS the spiritual world — the physical world, he said, was the Evil in the spiritual world. The other thing to know about Kafka is that when he read his stories people roared with laughter — we have lost the COMIC absurdity of his stuff. Third, David Lynch’s character in Twin Peaks has two pictures on his office wall: Kafka and a nuclear bomb going off.

​Kafka is actually best outside the novels and this Olio looks at his short stories which outside the Metamorphosis are quite short — minutes to read. Lets read and discuss some: A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, A Country Doctor, The Hunter Gracchus, The Great Wall of China, The Burrow, Josephine the Singer, The Knock at the Manor Gate, The Cares of a Family Man, The Problem of Our Laws, A Little Fable, On Parables.

No need to have read any of these beforehand. Think of it as an intro to Kafka!