"Trust me," the insect repeated. Franz did not.
What if Franz Kafka did not succumb to tuberculosis at the age of 40? What if he awoke the day after his supposed death to find himself attended by the giant insect he once imagined in his own story The Metamorphosis?
And what if he were recruited by a mysterious agency to investigate a rash of bizarre, mysterious murders plaguing 1924 Vienna? Murders that are possibly connected to an equally mysterious performer who commits suicide every night at the music hall (but cannot be connected to any crimes)?
The Hanging Artist leads the newly rehabilitated Franz Kafka on an absurdist round of discoveries, the solution of which is more fantastical than anything he imagined.