The Kafka Chronicles

by Mark Amerika

Book Overview

Explores the relationship between style and substance, self and sexuality, and identity and difference

The Kafka Chronicles is an adventure into the psyche of an ultracontemporary twentysomething artist who is lost in an underworld of drugs and mental terrorism, where he encounters a cast of angry yet sensual characters: Alkaloid Boy and Blue Sky, an inconspicuous and loving couple who find themselves subjected to constant...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0932511546
• ISBN13: 9780932511546
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: F2c
• Length: 189 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.4" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

postmodern masterpiece still resonates

I read this novel when it first came out in 1993 and finally made my way back to it ten years later. What an incredible book - very prohpetic, especially the wildly satirical "Amerika At War: The Mini-Series" chapter that takes up the bulk of the middle of this book. It's like Jonathan Swift meets Joseph Heller meets Philip Roth meets Celine (who Amerika is actually compared to on the back cover). There are very few young American writers who are do deft at lampooning the far right politicians, but Amerika succeeds at this like no other (you get this eerie feeling reading about the Persian Gulf War of 1991 and seeing how the author's hyberbole has become The Real Thing with Bush 43 in 2003). Amerika has stopped writing novels and is now an internationally famous video and digital artist, but his early breakthrough work like The Kafka Chronicles positions him as both the James Joyce and William Burroughs of his generation.