Ten years ago, when I would ask my students if they knew any modern Italian authors—not Dante—I would occasionally get the response of “Calvino” and, more ...

Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski
Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski works on Italian literature from a comparative perspective. Currently Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Italian at Duke University, she publishes on modernism, world literature, literary history, animal studies, Trieste, transnationalism, and Jewish Italian literature. Her first book, Kafka’s Italian Progeny (University of Toronto, 2020), explores Franz Kafka’s connections with key writers who have shaped Italy’s literary landscape.
Kafka Transformed
Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa has undergone numerous metamorphoses in English: into “a gigantic insect,” “a monstrous vermin,” “a monstrous cockroach,” “some sort of monstrous insect,” and “a monstrous bug” ...