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Jonathan Lethem is the award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn, which became a film with Ed Norton, and Fortress of Solitude, which got turned into an off-Broadway musical. He’s just published a career collection of short stories from the early nineties to the present, titled A Different Kind of Tension, after a Buzzcocks song. We talk about the tension in his work between the real and the surreal, about talking animals — including a show-biz crab in one good story — and, well, a lot about Franz Kafka.

Resources:

A Different Kind of Tension, by Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem’s website

“The Beggar King,” a short story narrated by a cat, by Michael Scott Moore

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