Award-winning comedian David Baddiel discusses the kinds of humour that operate in Kafka and how laughter and nightmare are often closer than you think

Dancing "The Metamorphosis"

Oxford Humanities explores approaches to Kafka and his most famous story "The Metamorphosis": how the text has itself been transformed into new forms like ballet, theatre and comic books; how Kafka’s work has been read, from ecological insights to questions of illness, humour, feminism or race; how writers from across the world have responded to him from J. M. Coetzee to the 'Brazilian Kafka' Clarice Lispector or Marie NDiaye; and finally how artists have 'written back' to Kafka from their own time and place from the Czech Republic, Spain or even a viral Facebook novel in Russia.

For the curious a reading list associated with this series is available on ORLO (see Related Links).