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A Cage Went in Search of a Bird
- Narrator
- various
- Publisher
- Little, Brown Book Group
- Publish Date
- 30 May 2024
- Run Time
- 5 hours 15 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
*Chosen as a 2024 highlight in the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, New Statesman, Esquire and the New European*
Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the great geniuses of twentieth-century literature. What happens when some of the most original literary minds of today take an idea, a mood or a line from his work and use it to spark something new?
From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten specially commissioned stories are by turns mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting. Inspired by the visionary imagination of a writer working one hundred years ago, they speak powerfully to the strangeness of being alive today.
Critics Review
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This inspired anthology demonstrates the enduring influence of Franz Kafka's fatalistic worldview and mordant humour ... These stories will do the trick for the Kafka-curious and diehard fans alike
Publishers Weekly
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Unsettling and uneasy ... brimful of the dark claustrophobia that made Kafka's work so startling and suffocating
Daily Mail
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This collection is quite the achievement ... both ridiculous and brilliant. Thank goodness it exists. Kafka himself would love it
i-paper
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A glorious new collection of short stories inspired by the angst-ridden absurdism of the Czech writer
Harper's Bazaar
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A kaleidoscope of Kafkaesque tales woven by a brilliant and diverse array of renowned and talented authors ... Readers are treated to a rich tapestry of narratives, each as captivating as it is thought-provoking
Glamour
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Mind-bending and consistently enjoyable ... A Cage Went in Search of a Bird is a roller coaster ride that will delight the adventuresome reader ... It's easy to imagine Kafka paging through these varied and deeply imagined tales and nodding in admiration
BookPage
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Offer narratives of baffling circumscriptions, illnesses, miscommunications, and technologies. But the stories also make space for potentiality, with characters witnessing change or glimpsing future possibilities - putting Kafka's turn-of-the-century disillusionment into conversation with our own
Poets & Writers
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A boon for Kafkaheads everywhere
The Millions
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Eerie, darkly comic, vertiginously varied ... a refreshing range of responses to the absurdist nature of modern life
Financial Times
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The writing in this collection is deft, self-referential, horrifying, and funny. In one story, the protagonist asks 'just who, and what, is a museum for? And [are] we really ready to have this conversation?' Here readers can ask, who is Kafka for? A Cage Went in Search of a Bird is ready to have that very conversation
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Details
- Author
- Ali Smith, Tommy Orange, Naomi Alderman, Helen Oyeyemi, Keith Ridgway, Yiyun Li, Charlie Kaufman, Elif Batuman, Leone Ross, Joshua Cohen
- Narrator
- various
- Duration
- 5 hours 15 minutes
- Release Date
- 30 May 2024
- ISBN
- 9781405561921
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Little, Brown Book Group
- Genre
- Short stories, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general
Synopsis
A collection of brand-new short stories written by prize-winning, bestselling writers and inspired by Kafka - published to commemorate the centenary of his death*Chosen as a 2024 highlight in the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, New Statesman, Esquire and the New European*Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the great geniuses of twentieth-century literature. What happens when some of the most original literary minds of today take an idea, a mood or a line from his work and use it to spark something new?From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten specially commissioned stories are by turns mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting. Inspired by the visionary imagination of a writer working one hundred years ago, they speak powerfully to the strangeness of being alive today.
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