Taking the Word “Kafkaesque” to a Grotesque New Level.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

With that disorienting, opening sentence, Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis begins its dreadful spiral into insanity. But to photographer Marc Paeps, and Air, a Brussels ad agency tasked with getting readers into local Filigranes Bookstores, Kakfa’s text inspires this image, above: That of a despondent, six-legged Samsa, cut off from the world in a sleazy motel, wasting his few remaining days and dollars on booze, hookers, and coke. (Click on the picture to see the much larger version’s sordid details.) The campaign’s theme is, “Make your own movie: Read a book.” Man, if that’s what’s inside books, I’m just gonna keep on watching American Idol.

[via Ads of the World]