Kafka’s work is all about fears, obsessions, and nightmarish images of a man trying to navigate and understand a world that overpowers him, a world he cannot explain.  If his hero (anti-hero?)  of The Metamorphosis awakes one morning transformed into a giant bug, the “hero” of A Report to an Academy begins as an Ape and is slowly transformed into a semblance of a human being. A reversal of the first text?  Possibly but the man reporting to the Academy has not made a completely successful transformation, and therein lies the rub. What interests Kafka here, is also the process of change. How does it take place and what does it show?

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