How does one pay homage to Franz Kafka—especially on the centenary of his death? He shaped literature like few others. Hardly any writer or poet, scarcely any other artist, can escape his influence. Editor Otto Brusatti rose to the challenge by inviting seventeen creators to offer their personal responses to Kafka. The form was left open: it might be a short story, a novella, a parable—but not a dramatic piece, nor any kind of continuation or elaboration of a Kafka fragment (if such a poetic “tors o” exists at all). Instead, Kafka was to serve as stimulus, secret inspiration, even model.

Theodora Bauer, Arno Geiger, Max Gruber, Monika Helfer, Bodo Hell, Paulus Hochgatterer, Franz Hohler, Radek Knapp, Natasha Korsakova, Thomas Macho, Kurt Palm, Rafik Schami, Stefan Slupetzky, Edgar Tezak, Renate Welsh, and Anton Zeilinger all agreed to contribute. The result can be found in this volume: the pieces are strikingly diverse—yet almost no one could or would entirely avoid Kafka’s models (above all from certain stories or from the novel „Der Prozeß“).