Mon Kafka

Our world resembles the one described by Kafka more than ever: massacres, corruption, inequality, and true darkness. Some mornings we feel like Gregor Samsa when the news leads to the most nightmarish interpretations. Maybe Kafka himself could give us the antidote? That is the spirit of Anne Gorouben, who for decades has found in the Journal reasons to be comforted, and sometimes even a certain empathy with humanity. “Franz Kafka writes like one draws”, she says, and she herself draws like he writes. References to dreams, like, for example with a knife in the heart, locked in a lamb park or smothered by the a woman’s wax bust, moments of anguish and insomnia as well as atmospheres of warm afternoons, of fleeing visions, such as a little girl coming out of a church, two boys carrying sheaves of straw. These personal reconstructions drawn with lead, with a soft trait, sfumato, that help embody the memory and souvenirs.

• Mon Kafka by Anne Gorouben, Les Belles Lettres, 2015, 128 p., €35.