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Title/Author

The Kafka Effekt

D. Harlan Wilson

Average Review Rating Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)
Book Details

Publisher : Eraserhead Press

Published : 2001

Copyright : D. Harlan Wilson 2001

ISBN-10 : PB 0-9713572-1-8
ISBN-13 : PB 978-0-9713572-1-1

Publisher's Write-Up

The Kafka Effekt is D. Harlan Wilson's debut book, a collection of forty-four short stories loosely written in the vein of Franz Kafka, with more than a pinch of William S. Burroughs sprinkled on top.

A manic depressive has a baby's bottom grafted onto his face; a hermaphrodite impregnates itself and gives birth to twins; a gaggle of professors find themselves trapped in a port-a-john and struggle to liberate their minds from the prison of reason-these are just a few of the precarious situations that the characters herein are forced to confront.

The Kafka Effekt is a post-modern scream. Absurd, intelligent, funny and scatological, Wilson turns reality inside out and exposes it as a grotesque, nightmarish machine that is always-already processing the human subject, who struggles to break free from the machine, but who at the same time revels in its subjugation.

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Reader Reviews

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Review by Paul Lappen (190304) Rating (8/10)

Review by Paul Lappen
Rating 8/10
This is a group of very short, and very strange, stories.

The hair growing out of a man's body are all hair-sized clones of Marlon Brando, except for his head and face, which are covered with clones of Michael Wincott, an underrated actor who usually plays a villain. To fight a major case of acne, a man has a baby's bottom grafted on to his face. A man tries to convince his feet not to eat him. A group of professors are trapped in a port-a-john and work to liberate their minds from the boundaries of reason.

Dr Thunderlove is a paediatrician whose eyes just happen to be outside his head, perched on the ends of grey-green stalks a half-foot long. A man's ear holes turn into mouths, with teeth and tongues that can taste and talk. At a cocktail party, a man throws himself through a door despite there being a sign on the door that says Open Me Up And Walk Through Me. A man's brain sneaks out of his head at night, and the man searches bars and strip clubs for it, sometimes for days. A hermaphrodite gets himself pregnant and gives birth to twins.

I believe that you get the idea. Think William S. Burroughs and Franz Kafka when reading these stories, but read them in small doses, because they are not for everyone. For those who like weird, mind-blowing literature, this is definitely worth reading.
Paul Lappen (19th March 2004)

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