Abstract: The illustrated title page of Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (1915) involves Kafka’s intention expression, the publisher and artist’s design, and critics’ interpretations. From the perspective of life writing, the story that the title page reveals indicates kown borderlines between the “autobiographical understanding” of the author and the “biographical understanding” about the author, the “biographical fact” and “interpretations of it”, and “truth” and “fiction”; meanwhile, such borderlines themselves can evolve and expand into a meaning-generating space.

Key words: Franz Kafka; Die Verwandlung; illustrated title page

Zhao Shankui is Professor of Comparative Literature at College of Humanities, Zhejiang Normal University, China. He also connects with Shanghai Jiao Tong University Center for Life-Writing. He published Biographical Perspective and Literary Reading (2012) and “An Anoymous Greek’s ‘Unhistorical Destiny’: Franz Kafka’s ‘Ein Landarzt’ and the Ancient Greek Literature” (2013).