Introduction
Kafka, World Literature, and the Italian Literary Landscape
The Place of Italian Literature in World Literature Debates
Kafka’s Italian Reception: An Overview
Morante and Buzzati: Two Cases of Kafka Reception
Kafka’s Italian Progeny: An Overview
1. Amerika in Italy: Kafka’s Realism, Pavese, and Calvino
Kafka’s Amerika in Italy
The Italian View of Kafka’s Realism
Calvino’s Realist Kafka
Amerika and The Path to the Spiders’ Nests: Finding and Losing the Way, All Over Again
The Americas of Kafka and Pavese
2. Dreams of Short Fiction after Kafka: Lalla Romano, Giorgio Manganelli, and Antonio Tabucchi
Lyrical, Short Kafka
Experimenting with Short, Short Works after Kafka
The Transformations of Romano, Manganelli, and Tabucchi
3. Processi without End: The Mysteries of Dino Buzzati and Paola Capriolo
Kafka, Detective Fiction, and Italy
The Structures of Suspense: Questions, Identity, and Home
Prisons of Analysis and the Pull of Imagination
4. Kafka’s Parental Bonds: The Family as Institution in Italian Literature
The Familial Institution in Kafka and Modern Italian Literature
Svevo’s A Life and Ferrante’s Troubling Love: Societal Stress and the Bonds of Family
Leaving Parental Bonds in Bontempelli’s The Son of Two Mothers and Morante’s Arturo’s Island
5. The Human-Animal Boundary, Italian Style: Kafka’s Red Peter in Conversation with Svevo’s Argo, Morante’s Bella, and Landolfi’s Tombo
Italian Literature, Kafka, and Animal Studies
Communication across Species: The Monologues of Kafka’s Red Peter and Svevo’s Argo
Interspecial Communication: Landolfi’s Châli and Tombo, Morante’s Belli and Immacolatella
The Language of Animals and Dialects
Animal Bodies and Christian Spirit in Morante, Landolfi, and Buzzati
Epilogue
Calvino’s Kafka and Kafka’s Italy
