Etudes de silhouettes

"Each of the texts in this work proceed from the fragments and cryptic beginnings found scattered throughout the notebooks Max Brod took possession of after Kafka's death. The results tend to be as variable as they are unexpected: outlines of tales, madcap soliloquies, fairy tale inversions, strange parables, comedic monologues. In some instances a single fragment of Kafka's is reprised multiple times, yielding parallel but divergent texts. Other times, a unique fragment is driven to its logical extreme, or gives way to a dizzying cascade of ab absurdum speculation, and one marvels how the development could have been otherwise. As one might expect, all of Kafka’s familiar obsessions—the night and its terrors, the law, justice and its lack, bureaucracy, animals, et cetera—are here in force. Each passage begins in boldface to indicate the hand of the Prague lawyer, before giving way to Senges's liberties."—Jacob Siefring

Pierre Senges is the author of fifteen books and over seventy plays for radio. Senges's most recent book to appear in English translation is Geometry in the Dust (tr. Jacob Siefring, Inside the Castle), with lavish and grotesque illustrations by Killoffer. Senges's work has been recognized for its erudite humor and its baroque affinities, and it is the object of a number of articles by various French literary scholars.

Jacob Siefring is a writer and translator. His translations have been featured in Gorse Journal, The Collagist, The White Review, Numéro Cinq Magazine, Music & Literature, and elsewhere. He is the translator of Geometry in the Dust and The Major Refutation, both by Pierre Senges. His short translations include texts by Stéphane Mallarmé, Patrick Nicol, Steve Gagnon and Véronique Côté, Julie Mazzieri, and Hélène Frédèrick.