Kafka’s growing presence
A century after Franz Kafka’s death, his influence remains deeply entrenched. As the world marks 100 years since his passing on June 3, and prepares to commemorate the 141st anniversary of his birth on July 3, Kafka’s legacy continues to shape literature and culture.
To mark the occasion, cultural circles around the world—especially in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria—have held events in his honor. Among them was “Kafka’s Night,” a gathering of writers, artists, critics, and intellectuals from various countries, each reflecting on their relationship with the man behind the legacy.
The first encounter: Faculty of Al-Alsun
My personal relationship with Kafka stretches back forty years. I first encountered his work as a student in the German Department at the Faculty of Al-Alsun, Ain Shams University in Cairo. Before that, I had only seen his name in passing, perhaps in a piece by Taha Hussein or another writer, though I can’t recall exactly. At the time, I hadn’t yet read any of his works.
At the time, the head of the German Department was Dr. Mostafa Maher, a pioneer in bringing German literature to Arabs. He was among the translators who brought Kafka’s most well known works, including "The Trial", "The Castle", and the short stories "The Judgment" and "The Metamorphosis", into Arabic.
Dr. Maher was not merely a university professor. He was an inspiration, at least to those of us drawn to culture.
I remember his lectures less for their formal instruction than for his passionate digressions into classical music and visual art. Some students would say he often “drifted”, speaking at length on topics that seemed far afield from the German literary history we were meant to be studying.
But for a handful of culture-loving classmates and me, and the brilliant translator Samir Grees, his classes were the highlight of our university years.
As part of our coursework, Dr. Maher assigned "The Trial", along with excerpts from well-known German writers and poets. Since original editions were unavailable, he handed out faint, poorly reproduced photocopies. I still have mine, its margins filled with the notes and scribbles of a student newly enthralled.
From the opening lines, "The Trial" stopped being just another assignment. It became a puzzle that drew me in with its opacity and haunted logic, at once deeply unsettling and strangely addictive. Over the decades that followed, I returned to it again and again, whether in German or in various translations.
Under the spell
“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.”
That is how The Trial begins—with a sentence as concise as it is arresting, one that distills the entire novel’s unsettling premise. This stark, matter-of-fact style is a hallmark of Kafka’s writing, and part of what makes it so uniquely compelling.
Similarly, The Metamorphosis opens with another unforgettable line: “One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.”
Both sentences have become iconic—lodged not only in literary history but in popular imagination. They continue to resonate with millions of readers who find in Kafka’s characters distorted reflections of their own anxieties and estrangements. And beyond literature, these opening lines have stirred the imaginations of artists, filmmakers, playwrights, and philosophers alike.
Indeed, one could argue that Kafka’s stories planted the seeds of surrealism well before the movement had a name.
Colombian writer and journalist Gabriel García Márquez once said that when he read the opening sentence to "The Metamorphosis", he had no idea that people were allowed to write in such a way. From that moment, he started writing fiction.
I believe that what happened to Márquez is what happened to me when I first read the opening lines of "The Trial". And, indeed, it is what happens to most readers of Kafka.
A timeless presence
It’s strange now to think that when I first read Kafka many years ago, his name was scarcely known in Egypt. The few translations of his work received little attention compared to the towering presence of Russian authors like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, or French literary figures such as Balzac, Zola, Camus, Sartre, and Baudelaire. Even American writers like Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck were more frequently translated and discussed at the time.
Today, Kafka has eclipsed them all in popularity among young Egyptian readers. His books are prominently displayed in bookstores, both online and brick-and-mortar, as well as by street vendors. Readers actively seek them out.
On social media, his name appears regularly in literary, political, psychological, and philosophical discussions, often accompanied by hashtags celebrating his legacy.
To me, this is both astonishing and deeply gratifying. A hundred years after his death, Kafka feels more "contemporary" than ever.
Stories and memories
I fell in love with Kafka from the very first sentence of The Trial. In my final year at university, I dedicated my graduation thesis to “The Human Condition in Kafka’s World”—a subject that has inspired countless essays and critical studies, then and since.
There is, undeniably, a distinct literary universe that can be called “Kafka’s World,” inhabited by characters who are trapped, tormented, and absurdly doomed. His protagonists are weighed down by a profound sense of guilt, despite their innocence. They are condemned to navigate nightmarish landscapes where the logic of punishment is opaque, and escape is impossible.
Years later, while working as a journalist at Rose El-Youssef magazine, my relationship with Kafka deepened. I translated several of his short stories that had yet to appear in Arabic, including a hauntingly beautiful piece titled "From the Balcony". It is one of the finest works I have ever read.
I also authored a comparative study of Kafka’s "Investigations of a Dog" and Yahya Taher Abdullah’s "Hekaya Ala Lesan Kalb". Both stories are narrated by dogs, chronicling the rituals of their kind while offering subtle, unsettling reflections on human existence. I doubt Abdullah ever read Kafka’s tale, and yet the thematic parallels between the two are striking.
At one point, I even considered comparing Sonallah Ibrahim’s "The Committee" and Kafka’s "The Trial". The two novels share a chilling resonance in their portrayal of faceless authority, existential entrapment, and the inscrutability of guilt. I never put that comparison to paper, but it has stayed with me.
At the second edition of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre in 1989, I met Hassan El Geretly, the founder of El Warsha Theater Troupe, along with its talented members.
The troupe was preparing a play based on Kafka’s "In the Penal Colony". While I no longer recall the details, I do remember writing an introduction for the play’s pamphlet, titled “Can Kafka Be Theatricalized?” It was a reflection on the technical challenges of adapting Kafka’s literature for the stage.
Years later, I had the same question regarding Kafka’s works in cinema when watching Orson Welles’ "The Trial" (1962) and Steven Soderbergh’s "Kafka" (1991). While I have seen most films adapted from his works, none quite capture the unique intensity found in his texts. Perhaps the best among them is Soderbergh’s film, which blends elements of Kafka’s life and fiction into a single narrative.
More cinematic than cinema?
Perhaps cinema has yet to capture Kafka’s world as it truly deserves. Maybe we are still waiting for a more faithful adaptation. But I suspect the issue runs deeper than that.
Kafka’s work contains the early seeds of surrealism—images that seem drawn from dreams or the subconscious, disconnected from the rational world. At the same time, his writing bears the imprint of magical realism, a reality rendered through a dreamlike lens, as though filtered through the haze of just waking.
What’s striking is how "cinematic" Kafka’s stories feel, perhaps even more so than many films. The same might be said of Márquez and the novels of magical realism, which have often defied satisfying adaptation to the screen.
Why that may be a question for deeper study. But what seems clear is that Kafka’s influence on cinema is undeniable, not necessarily through direct adaptations, but in more transformative ways. His legacy lingers in tone, atmosphere, and structure, much like the imprint of magical realism on Latin American film. It is a kind of cinematic haunting, less about narrative fidelity than about the emotional logic of the absurd.
(*) A version of this story first appeared in Arabic on June 6, 2024.