Einstein in Kafkaland - by Ken Krimstein (Hardcover)

About the Book

From award-winning New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein, a brilliant graphic narrative revealing the pivotal year in Prague when Einstein became "Einstein," Kafka became "Kafka," and everything changed forever.

Book Synopsis

"Clever, charming, amusing, and just plain brilliant. Ken Krimstein is the most inventive graphic biographer on the planet-and certainly the only one who could explain both Einstein and Kafka. A page turner on gravity and relativity!" -KAI BIRD, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of American Prometheus, the biography that inspired the Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer

From the award-winning New Yorker cartoonist, a graphic narrative revealing the pivotal year in Prague when Einstein became "Einstein," Franz Kafka became "Kafka," and the world changed forever.

During the year that Prague was home to both Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka from 1911-1912, the trajectory of the two men's lives wove together in uncanny ways-as did their shared desire to tackle the world's biggest questions in Europe's strangest city. In stunning words and pictures, Einstein in Kafkaland reveals the untold story of how their worlds wove together in a cosmic battle for new kinds of truth.

For Einstein, his lost year in Prague set him on the path to what many consider the greatest scientific discovery of all time, his General Theory of Relativity. And for Kafka, this charmed year was a bridge to writing his first masterpiece, The Judgment. Based on diaries, lectures, letters, and papers from this period amid a planet electrifying itself into modernity, Einstein in Kafkaland brings to life the emergence of a new world where art and science come together in ways we still grapple with today.

Review Quotes

"Bending real history into a fantastical tale of two young thinkers in pursuit of 'the true truth, ' [a] playful graphic novel by New Yorker cartoonist Krimstein . . . Irreverent yet full of tenderness for its subjects, Krimstein's experiment is a dizzying delight." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Einstein in Kafkaland is crisply written, witty, and with art that evokes places in time and feelings in the way all great graphic stories should. Along with some of Einstein's important physics, you may learn just what Kafka was driving at. One man manages to convince his readers the universe is impossible to understand; it's mysterious, even hostile. The other discovers the universe is knowable, if we embrace a future determined by gravity. If that seems weird and Kafka-esque, read on." --Bill Nye

"Clever, charming, amusing, and just plain brilliant. Ken Krimstein is the most inventive graphic biographer on the planet-and certainly the only one who could explain both Einstein and Kafka. A page turner on gravity and relativity!" --Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of American Prometheus, the biography that inspired the Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer

"Ken Krimstein has staked out territory as comics' foremost chronicler of the intellectual history of the 20th century . . . Great back-to-basics cartooning set against great cityscapes of Prague." --Forbes, "Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2024!"

"With wit, imagination, and vivid illustrations, Krimstein stretches the boundary of literary biography, turning dense history into a playful meditation on the unfettered boundaries of genius." --Comics Beat, "The Beat's 50 Best Comics of 2024"

"Art and science collide in Ken Krimstein's new graphic biography. In this book, the author of the brilliant and whimsical The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt similarly translates careful research into scenic, emotive comics-in this case tracking the potential effects of an adventitious meeting in Prague between two geniuses on the cusp of world-changing discoveries." --NPR, "Summer Books Our Critics Can't Wait to Read"

"For the science-challenged, it comes as a relief and a delight to have gravity and relativity explained in Ken Krimstein's marvelously inventive graphic novel." --The New York Sun

"[Krimstein] engagingly chronicles a significant time period for both [Einstein and Kafka] . . . A fun, amusing fantasy about an important year in two icons' lives." --Kirkus Reviews

"Krimstein builds a remarkable historical fantasy that draws [Einstein and Kafka] together, each pulled along in their own way by the White Rabbit (yes, THAT White Rabbit) . . . readers seeking to go down the rabbit hole and feel the truth will be at home in these pages." --Booklist

"With a dip into dream logic, and lots of historical truth, Einstein and Kafka meet in Prague, on the cusp of world-changing ideas." --The Chicago Tribune

"Transports us through time and space and down the rabbit hole where Einstein learns that relativity is reality. Don't be surprised if you exclaim (yes, exclaim) 'curiouser and curiouser!' as you make your way through Ken Krimstein's newest graphic novel, Einstein in Kafkaland. That's exactly what Alice did early in her adventures in Wonderland when she noticed a non-trivial event: her feet walking quite quickly away from her - 'almost out of sight' - and quite without her. Parts of Kafkaland might well evoke similar reactions."" --The Evanston Roundtable

"A whim-si-cal, thought-ful sto-ry whose lyri-cism will grab read-ers at unex-pect-ed moments." --Jewish Book Council

"Krimstein's art is as eclectic as the story. A mixture of sketches and watercolors brings the story to life." --No Flying No Tights

About the Author

Ken Krimstein has published cartoons in the New Yorker, Punch, the Wall Street Journal, and more. He is the author of The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt, which won the Bernard J. Brommel Award for Biography and Memoir, was a finalist for the Jewish Book Award and the Chautauqua Prize, and has been published in eight countries and in six languages. He is also the author of Kvetch as Kvetch Can and, most recently, When I Grow Up, named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and the Washington Post. A recipient of a Yaddo residency, he lives and writes and draws in Evanston, Illinois.