Kafka’s Lung

Cecilia Hansson

‘I’m standing outside the main door to Hauptstrasse 187. It’s the beginning of May, the time of year when Kafka was journeying towards death. The sun beats on the back of my neck and I’m clutching a cake box. There are birds; I hear one or two cars faintly, a distance away.

If I close my eyes, I can imagine the cloud of dust sent up by the horses on the clay road. There’s the scent of new-mown hay. It could just as easily have been my mother’s home town in Tornedalen, way up in northern Sweden. The peace, and the feeling of being outside the world.’

Had Cecilia Hansson lived a hundred years ago, she would have entered a resting home to get away from everyday life. Now, she is instead travelling around Central Europe in search of Kafka. Why so obsessed with Franz Kafka? And it’s not rest she feels the need of, but life – before the air runs out in her lungs!

This is a close, personal reading of Kafka’s collected works – in the light of our times. She has dug in archives in Vienna, in Prague and in northern Sweden, and visited the sanatorium in Tornedalen where her grandmother was treated for her tuberculosis. And most of all, she has dug into herself. With Franz Kafka’s help. In this European novel, two sets of lungs meet and breath as one.

Cecilia Hansson is a Swedish author, journalist, and poet, and a well-known expert on Central Europe. Her previous novels Au Pair and Snow & Potatoes has been highly praised by critics. In 2017, she published a book called Hopeless But Not Serious, featuring essays on culture and politics in Central Europe and interviews with known European intellectuals, such as Marina Abramovich and Herta Müller. Cecilia’s poignant literary voice stands out and brings to mind like-minded thinkers of today, such as Maria Stepanova.

‘Cecilia Hansson reminds us of the body’s importance while we are all caught up in the cerebral creation, and that is really worth something.’
Aftonbladet

‘A strange, at times shimmeringly beautiful book.’
Göteborgs-Posten