Hanif Kureishi reads 'A Hunger Artist' by Franz Kafka

The most important things – eating, sleeping and sex – are difficult, if not sometimes impossible, for everyone. Kafka's short masterpiece, "A Hunger Artist", written at the end of his life in 1922, tells the story of a man who makes the most of this by perfecting the art of starvation, and exhibiting himself in a cage for the public. This is self-deprivation and punishment as entertainment, with the anorexic as ­celebrity. Kafka's parable is absurd, moving and timely.