Adapting Beyond Text: Kafka, Murakami, and BD “Samsa in Love”

Murakami Haruki’s short story “Samsa in Love” (2013) tells the story of a protagonist who turns into a human being called Gregor Samsa, who then falls in love with a locksmith woman. As the name Gregor Samsa suggests, this work has heavy intertextuality with Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and can be read as Murakami’s adaptation of Kafka’s work. The short story then gets a French-style comic (Bande Dessinée) adaptation by French scriptwriter Jean-Christophe Deveney and illustrator PMGL. This paper first examines the alterations made in the story to understand how the adapters retell not only Murakami’s short story, but also Kafka’s work in the BD adaptation. This paper then explores how the BD attempts to incorporate elements beyond the story itself, such as depicting an untranslatable word and incorporating the authors into the narrative. This study finds that the adapters do more than simply retell Murakami’s story; they expand its intertextual scope by visually incorporating elements of Kafka’s work into the adaptation, thereby further connecting the two stories. Moreover, The Metamorphosis is not the only prior text haunting the adaptation. Kafka and Murakami, as the authors, also behave as prior texts, whose identities continue to haunt, shape, and enrich the adaptation. Finally, through its transposition into a visual medium, the story gains an additional layer of accessibility. It gives new possibilities for conveying untranslatable words or nuances across cultural and linguistic boundaries. While adaptation is often viewed as a transformation from one text to another within a different context, this paper argues that what’s being incorporated into the adaptation is not just the narrative text, but also the authorial identity surrounding the text, which can create expectations that affect how the readers may perceive the adaptation. By highlighting the roles of authorship, intertextuality, and visual storytelling, this paper underscores how adaptation engages not only with narrative content but with the authorial identities and intertextual echoes that continue to shape meaning across media.