The Kafka Effect

D. Harlan Wilson's debut book is a collection of 44 short stories written in the vein of Franz Kafka with a pinch of William S. Burroughs sprinkled on top. A manic depressive has a baby's bottom grafted onto his face, a hermaphrodite impregnates itself and gives birth to twins, a gaggle of professors get trapped in a port-a-john and struggle to free their minds from the prison of reason – these are a few of the book's many precarious irrealities. The Kafka Effekt is a postmodern scream. Absurd, intelligent, funny and scatological, Wilson turns reality inside out and exposes it as a grotesque, nightmarish machine that is always-already processing the human subject, who struggles to break free from the machine, but who at the same time revels in its subjugation.