Kafka is an illustrated biography on the influential Czech surreal writer Franz Kafka written by David Zane Mairowitz, laden with perfectly suited artwork by none other than the legendary Robert Crumb. It's hard to imagine a pastier, creepier, more apt coupling of self-loathing talents than that on display in this new publication from Fantagraphics Books.

Mairowitz thoughtfully presents Kafka's life from his roots in the Jewish ghetto of Prague to his adulthood as a hyper-neurotic artiste. But it is Crumb's trademark illustrations which instantly propel this book beyond being another bio of the writer who made Kafka-esque the lazy literature students' favourite adjective. Crumb's evocative black and white illustrations capture fragments and scenes from throughout Kafka's troubled existence. The famed comic artist deftly expands beyond single frame illustrations into multi-panel, multi-page mini comics that flit between detailing real-life scenarios (troubles with Papa, awkward sexual encounters, delusions of self-mutilation) and encapsulating some of Kafka's most famous short stories.

Needless to say, Robert Crumb illustrating Kafka's classic of the grotesque, Metamorphosis, is the ultimate bad trip. Crumb's take on the story is told from the morning the protagonist awakens in the chitinous shell of a plus-sized cockroach, and the artist's organic, warts-and-all style lends a new, putrid element to this already affecting tale of self-induced alienation.

Trade paperback editions of Kafka are on sale now.