A Cage Went in Search of A Bird

About the collaboration

A Cage Went in Search of a Bird is an anthology of 10 brand-new stories inspired by Kafka, published by Abacus Books on 30 May 2024. The book was specially commissioned to commemorate the centenary of Kafka’s death in 2024, an idea sparked by the Kafka's Transformative Communities project.

In 2023, Professor Carolin Duttlinger contacted Anna Kelly, Publishing Director at Little, Brown, with the suggestion of publishing an anthology of Kafkaesque short stories. As they corresponded about Kafka’s microfiction and how this could be expanded, the concept for the book gradually took shape.

Anna Kelly says: 

‘The idea for the book A Cage Went in Search of a Bird came from conversations with Carolin Duttlinger about Kafka’s centenary celebrations and her suggestions for the book helped to spark the initial ideas for fantastic stories by prize-winning, world-renowned authors. For example her suggestion of using fragments of The Blue Octavo Notebooks as inspiration was the starting point for wonderfully original and creative stories by Ali Smith, Charlie Kaufman and Naomi Alderman, and her guidance on Kafka’s treatment of ideas about Jewishness and Judaism helped to shape Naomi Alderman’s story “God’s Doorbell,” now shortlisted for the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award. Working with the centenary project was key to the book’s genesis and development.’

Watch the interview:

About the collection

The author list features major literary bestsellers and prize winners, including Ali Smith, Joshua Cohen, Elif Batuman, Naomi Alderman, Tommy Orange, Helen Oyeyemi, Keith Ridgway, Yiyun Li, Leone Ross and Charlie Kaufman. The introduction was written by prize-winning critic Becca Rothfeld. 

Taking their cue from Kafka’s visionary imagination, each story vividly evokes the strangeness of being alive today. From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten stories are mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting.

Reviews

‘This inspired anthology demonstrates the enduring influence of Franz Kafka's fatalistic worldview and mordant humour... These stories will do the trick for the Kafka-curious and diehard fans alike - Publishers Weekly

‘Unsettling and uneasy... brimful of the dark claustrophobia that made Kafka's work so startling and suffocating’ - Daily Mail

‘This collection is quite the achievement... both ridiculous and brilliant. Thank goodness it exists. Kafka himself would love it’ - i-paper

‘A glorious new collection of short stories inspired by the angst-ridden absurdism of the Czech writer’ - Harper's Bazaar