Completely Kafka: A Comic Biography [Paperback]

A delightfully witty and original graphic biography of Kafka, published to coincide with the centenary of the author’s death

This bold and sharply funny new look at Kafka is told through Nicolas Mahler's distinctive graphic novel style and minimalist illustrations. Full of fascinating details and witty, absurdist illustrations, it’s a delightful tribute to one of the world’s great writers.

Franz Kafka not only wrote prose, he was also passionate about drawing: at one time, he even said it satisfied him more than anything else. In this graphic biography, acclaimed artist Nicolas Mahler echoes Kafka’s own minimalist drawing style in a unique and surprising approach to the great writer’s life and work.

Drawing extensively on Kafka’s fiction, letters, and diaries, Completely Kafka illustrates the major and minor details that formed his life, from struggles with self-doubt and writer’s block to a failed plan for a series of cheap travel guides. If you are Nicolas Mahler, the writer and illustrator of a short but engaging graphic biography of the man, you’d see [Kafka] as a sort of blob of hair and eyebrows on a stick. The illustrations of Completely Kafka may look rudimentary, but they work. In fact they’re similar in style to the doodles Kafka himself would make in his notebooks.
-- Spectator

Much the best thing about the book are the charming black and white drawings. The best are the drawings of Kafka himself, drawn in thick brushstroke. Some are like cartoons, a few are more like Kafka’s own drawings, angular, isolated.
--Jewish ChronicleNicolas Mahler lives in Vienna, where he works as a comic artist and illustrator. His comic strips lµ