As part of the commemoration of the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka, who died on June 3, 1924 in Austria, he District Institute of the Arts – Idartes Puts to available more than 2000 copies from the title of Book to the Wind ‘A hunger artist and other stories’, a collection of short stories by the Czech writer.
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Julio García Peñaloza, from Bogotá, professional in Languages and Sociocultural Studies, translated this compilation of 10 stories written by Kafka originally in German thanks to a scholarship awarded in 2022 by the District Institute of the Arts – Idartes.
For his part, Fredy Ordoñez was in charge of editing this version ofA hunger artist and other storieswhich was published in 2023 by the program Book to the Wind.
The name of this work is inspired by the story of the same name written by Kafka in 1922, under the title Ein Hungerkünstlerin the magazine Die neue Rundschau, which tells the story of a man who locks himself in a cage to show his ability to survive despite not consuming a single food as part of a show.
Libro al Viento is an Idartes program that makes thousands of books available to the city’s inhabitants and in this 2024 marks 20 years of promoting reading in Bogotá. These texts are seen as a public good, so it is expected that, once read, they will be left free so that other readers can enjoy them.
During the course of the year, the District Institute of the Arts- Idartes will have other activities related to the name day of Kafka’s death, including an exhibition organized in conjunction with the Goethe Institute.
He was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague. He studied law and went on to work in several law firms and as an insurance broker.
It is considered one of the most important German-language writers of the 20th century. His contributions in terms of literary experimentation, being one of the first, and even dreamlike, make him a reference in universal literature.
Among the best-known books in Czech are Metamorphosis, a short novel that recounts the sudden and distressing transformation of Gregorio Samsa into a huge insect; and The processa text that the author had asked to disappear, but which was published by one of his friends after his death, where the protagonist Joseph K. lives a true nightmare when he is arrested for a crime whose details are uncertain.
Although he died with only 40 years, He left an indelible mark with his work, loaded with a existentialism that distorts reality, addressing philosophical questions that question the condition of contemporary man, so in his impressive stories, anguish and absurdity They are protagonists along with the enigma, guilt, bureaucracy, frustration or loneliness.
