This book explores Kafka’s sometimes surprising connections with key Italian writers, from Italo Calvino to Elena Ferrante, who shaped Italy’s modern literary landscape.

Introduction

Kafka, World Literature, and the Italian Literary Landscape

The Place of Italian Literature in World Literature Debates
Kafka’s Italian Reception: An Overview
Morante and Buzzati: Two Cases of Kafka Reception
Kafka’s Italian Progeny: An Overview

1. Amerika in Italy: Kafka’s Realism, Pavese, and Calvino

Kafka’s Amerika in Italy
The Italian View of Kafka’s Realism
Calvino’s Realist Kafka
Amerika and The Path to the Spiders’ Nests: Finding and Losing the Way, All Over Again
The Americas of Kafka and Pavese

2. Dreams of Short Fiction after Kafka: Lalla Romano, Giorgio Manganelli, and Antonio Tabucchi

Lyrical, Short Kafka
Experimenting with Short, Short Works after Kafka
The Transformations of Romano, Manganelli, and Tabucchi 

3. Processi without End: The Mysteries of Dino Buzzati and Paola Capriolo

Kafka, Detective Fiction, and Italy
The Structures of Suspense: Questions, Identity, and Home
Prisons of Analysis and the Pull of Imagination

4. Kafka’s Parental Bonds: The Family as Institution in Italian Literature

The Familial Institution in Kafka and Modern Italian Literature
Svevo’s A Life and Ferrante’s Troubling Love: Societal Stress and the Bonds of Family
Leaving Parental Bonds in Bontempelli’s The Son of Two Mothers and Morante’s Arturo’s Island

5. The Human-Animal Boundary, Italian Style: Kafka’s Red Peter in Conversation with Svevo’s Argo, Morante’s Bella, and Landolfi’s Tombo

Italian Literature, Kafka, and Animal Studies
Communication across Species: The Monologues of Kafka’s Red Peter and Svevo’s Argo
Interspecial Communication: Landolfi’s Châli and Tombo, Morante’s Belli and Immacolatella
The Language of Animals and Dialects
Animal Bodies and Christian Spirit in Morante, Landolfi, and Buzzati

Epilogue
Calvino’s Kafka and Kafka’s Italy

Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski is an assistant professor of Italian in Romance Studies at Duke University.