Kafka and Noise

“For any reader captivated by the curious persistence of strange sounds in Kafka’s work, the consequences of Gellen’s work simply for understanding Kafka’s are exciting in themselves.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

"[Gellen's] study makes a significant contribution to the ways in which film studies may provide critical concepts that supplement literary criticism and sound studies" —Monatshefte

"Impeccably argued and thoroughly researched, this book offers a series of original and incisive perspectives on Kafka's work in general, the role of sound and noise in Kafka's writing, and the coming of sound to twentieth-century literature. It will clearly add important new scholarship to the field of Kafka research, as well as a masterly contribution to the growing writing on Kafka's and other modernist writers' relationships to cinema and modern media culture."  —Lutz Koepnick, author of The Long Take: Art Cinema and the Wondrous

“Kafka and Noise is an ambitious and exciting addition to the interdisciplinary field of sound studies. Gellen demonstrates exemplary and enlightening close readings of Kafka’s stories in relation to his fascination with sounds—no small feat, considering the vast amount of scholarship on Kafka.” —Stefanie Harris, author of Mediating Modernity: German Literature and the “New” Media, 1895-1930

"Given its interdisciplinary character, Kafka and Noise will be of interest to Kafka scholars, modernists, literary critics, film scholars, and those working in sound studies and animal studies. This book is sure to stimulate cross-disciplinary dialogue and inspire a reconsideration of the disruptive, unsettling noises in the diegetic worlds of Kafka's stories." —Holly Yanacek, German Studies Review