Give It Up! And Other Short Stories [Paperback]

Franz Kafka (Author), Peter Kuper (Illustrator), Jules Feiffer (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2005

Nine paranoid tales by Franz Kafka are put to bold graphic comics.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Peter Kuper is a cofounder and editorial board member of political graphics magazine World War 3 Illustrated and a teacher who has taught at New York's School of Visual Arts and Parsons The New School for Design. Best known for drawing Mad magazine's Spy vs. Spy comic since 1997, he has also illustrated covers for Newsweek and Time magazines. He is the author of the graphic novel Sticks and Stones, which won the New York Society of Illustrators gold medal, and his autobiography, Stop Forgetting to Remember. He lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 63 pages
• Publisher: NBM Publishing (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561634492
• ISBN-13: 978-1561634491
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.7 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,795,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kafka and Peter Kuper = Awesome!, July 22, 2010

By 

Michael Carl Debenedictis "Michael DeBenedictis" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Give It Up! And Other Short Stories (Paperback)

I'm familiar with Franz Kafka's novels and stories and I can say that they were great. Just as Peter Kuper added an amazing contextual, visual, and more humanly relatable touch to Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" his work on Frank Kafka's short stories is just as great. The visual element doesn't denigrate, degrade, or cheapen the quality of the material, as one would generalize that adapting classic literature to graphic novel form would; instead it elevates it to the level of making the stories more relatable, presentable, and available to those who wouldn't normally pick up a novel, but just may get interested in doing so afterwards, similar to my response to history books after reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of American Empire" (the graphic novel adaptation of his history text "A People's History of the United States"; which I'm now sucked into.).

I give Peter Kuper's adapation to all of Franz Kafka's work - which lends itself to a wild imagination and visual frontier - 5 out of 5, 10 out of 10, and 100 out of 100.

1 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What?, October 11, 2007

By 

Jean E. Pouliot (Newburyport, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Give It Up! And Other Short Stories (Paperback)

I'm on a graphic novel kick and saw "Kafka" in the title. What's not to like? Just about everything.

I felt incredibly dumb reading this book. The stories are short parables about, um, something. I loved the stark BW graphics, but could make neither head nor tales from the stories. The first one ("A Little Fable")is about a mouse running in a maze (the corporate rat race, maybe?) who in the end faces a cheese-laden trap. A cat peering over the edge of the maze says, "You only need to change your direction." Then eats the mouse. This take place on 4 pages.

Other short takes involve a man-shaped bridge, A man asking directions from a cop, an insane murderer and a "hunger artist" living in a cage at the zoo.

OK, I'm a moron. I don't get it and don't care to try. The stories are either incredibly deep or incredibly pointless. If you're a Kafka fanatic, these illustrations of his work might appeal to you. For everyone else, give it up.