Actor Michael Shannon to Read Kafka's Work at 92NY Poetry Center

A wide-ranging group of contemporary writers profoundly marked by Kafka, led by actor Michael Shannon, will present an Oct. 29, 7:30 pm reading and conversation on Kafka's singular relevance — and why, 100 years after his death, we are still decoding him.

A century after his death, readers and fellow writers are still grappling with the gnomic, utterly absorbing work of this beguiling literary artist.

From haunting stories like “The Metamorphosis” and “In the Penal Colony” to prophetic novels like The Trial and The Castle, today Kafka's writings sound both contemporary and eternal, like dispatches extracted from the earth's core — an influence on generations of writers across the globe, from the Surrealists to Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Joshua Cohen.