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Stories 1904-1924
From the expressionism of his early prose pieces to his very last work, JOSEPHINE, these stories cover the full range of Kafka's writing career, culminating in THE METAMORPHOSIS, which Elias Canetti described as "one of the few great and perfect works of poetic imagination written during this century." Kafka's stories, argues Borges in his foreword, are superior even to his novels, which is why this collection "gives us the full dimesion of this unique writer.' J.A Underwood's acclaimed translation gives the reader all the chilling atmosphere of Kafka's darkly comic universe, as reflected in the commanding precision of his language.
271 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1995
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152 people want to read
About the author
Franz Kafka
3,167 books38.3k followersPrague-born writer Franz Kafka wrote in German, and his stories, such as "
The Metamorphosis
" (1916), and posthumously published novels, including
The Trial
(1925), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world.
Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature.
His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and " In the Penal Colony " (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).
Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.
Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short "The Metamorphosis." Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard.
Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera.
Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.
Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature.
His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and " In the Penal Colony " (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).
Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.
Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short "The Metamorphosis." Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard.
Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera.
Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 26, 2023
I fear I might have read some of the most profound short stories I’ve ever read in an awful translation. I looked up some of the stories afterward and found that this books short stories have titles and sentences that differ from other translations. And I liked the translations on google better, they just seemed easier to read. STILL I loved like 85% of this book. The Metamorphosis is obviously the crown jewel here, and the only story I had read before, but the other stories were superb and above all really funny. One more thing: big David Foster Wallace fan here, and I can definitely see why he liked Kafka. It's like the extremely self-aware narrator thing before it was cool.
Tomorrow I’ll try to find the rest of Kafkas works before I wake up like Gregor Samsa, in which case, it probably wouldn’t be a biggie.
Tomorrow I’ll try to find the rest of Kafkas works before I wake up like Gregor Samsa, in which case, it probably wouldn’t be a biggie.
May 7, 2023
Kafka strides a fine line between the familiar and the absurd. It is this conjuncture that makes his art so surreal. In search of meaning through his words, I let myself float in his world of feeling and was confronted by sadness, confusion and fear. I wish I could have extended my hand to him and offered warmth and companionship. To say “I feel you.” I only wish he hadn’t suffered so much loneliness.
This book is a collection of Kafka’s short stories. In addition to three of his published novels, these short stories are essential to understanding Kafka. Jorge Luis Borges wrote a splendid introduction to this translation where he outlines the principle questions that Kafka seeks to answer. These are to do with man’s relations with ‘patria potestad’ - paternal authority, i.e. father-son, citizen-state and individual-God. The nested confusion in Kafka’s work lies in a search for answers to this ambiguity of relations.
Clearer answers to these queries lie in the notebooks of Kafka; namely, in the aphorisms of his Reflections on Sin, Pain, Hope, and the True Way.
This book is a collection of Kafka’s short stories. In addition to three of his published novels, these short stories are essential to understanding Kafka. Jorge Luis Borges wrote a splendid introduction to this translation where he outlines the principle questions that Kafka seeks to answer. These are to do with man’s relations with ‘patria potestad’ - paternal authority, i.e. father-son, citizen-state and individual-God. The nested confusion in Kafka’s work lies in a search for answers to this ambiguity of relations.
Clearer answers to these queries lie in the notebooks of Kafka; namely, in the aphorisms of his Reflections on Sin, Pain, Hope, and the True Way.
Read
March 13, 2025**
(J.A. Underwood translation)
This collection is missing quite a few short stories, especially most of the 'The Great Wall of China' collection and the 'Description of a Struggle' translation. When I'm ready to revisit Kafka's short stories I'll be sure to check out the 'Complete Stories' collection (Schocken books, intro by John Updike and most of the translations by The Muirs.)
It may also be worth getting a separate smaller selected collection by a different translator; apparently the Metamorphosis translations by Hofmann and by Neugroschel are very good.
***********************************************
Looking To See: very little of this collection is mind-blowing but most of it is good, and witty, and containing seeds of greatness
Children in the Lane - gorgeous and dreamy and lyrical in a way that Kafka rarely attempted to be again. I wish he'd written more about childhood.
Unmasking a Confidence Trickster - hilarious
The Spur of the Moment Stroll - great, relatable
Decisions - same
The Excursion into the Mountains - no idea
The Bachelor's Lot - a genius and harrowing depiction of loneliness in just a handful of words
The Businessman - containing the same great critiques of over-work as 'The Trial' before getting pretty trippy in a way I don't fully understand but really enjoy
Wool Gathering at the Window - it seems like the narrator is musing on a wistful memory of the childhood enjoyed in the first story of this collection
The Way Home - one of Kafka's talents was to describe so perfectly the emotional journeys that some mundane walks can bring on.
Passers-by - a perfect little encapsulation of the horror and paranoia found in Kafka's world
The Passenger - a weird and powerful depiction of alienation
Dresses - meh
The Rebuff - hilarious and like exactly what every lonely straight guy in their teens/twenties thinks
For Jockeys to Ponder - some high quality shit-stirring
The Window on the Street - more great musings on loneliness
Wanting to be a Red Indian - the final line mentions a specifically 'well mown' stretch of moorland at which point my reading no longer makes any sense and I no longer have no idea what this story is meant to be about
The Trees - meh
Unhappiness - i'm sure there's emotional or philosophical depth here but unhappiness contains that common tendency of Kafka to write conversations between characters as if they're highly formal legal debates which occasionally works very well (e.g. The Trial, The Stoker) but usually I just don't connect with. in this case I don't think it fits the story.
***********************************************
The Sons Trilogy: the pinnacle of Kafka's art. I think it's fairly obvious that Kafka's best work comes from an extremely personal place and these three stories exemplify that.
The Judgement - absolutely fantastic; funny and dark and psychologically rich and full of bracing, grotesque terror. a fantastic ending too.
The Stoker - Kafka's greatest achievement after Metamorphosis, and by far his funniest work. Genius. (I didn't actually re-read the J.A. Underwood translation here as I'd only very recently read 'Amerika' translated by Michael Hofmann, with 'The Stoker' as its first chapter)
Metamorphosis - I was obviously aware that this was Kafka's most well-known work but I wasn't prepared for how emphatically it surpasses everything else he wrote. Most of Kafka's work is concerned less with character and more with environment, atmosphere, philosophical concepts and social-political metaphors. His protagonists have little inner life and generally fit into a consistent archetype of the flustered and aggrieved victim to whom things consistently happen. They act only in reaction to events they cannot control, only out of need and never out of desire. Even by the end of their story we barely know them as a person, they consist not of great depths but of hasty decisions and desperate moves. The characters populating these worlds are even shallower; they are impenetrable, unfathomable, illogical and unknowable, saying and doing things that appear senselessly cruel and arbitrary, as if adhering to secret bureaucratic policies not only in realms of bureacracy (law, policing, housing etc.) but even in the realm of interpersonal relationships.
This is, obviously, the point, and when it works (The Trial, much of Amerika, In The Penal Colony, A Dream) it works brilliantly. Our protagonists are not three-dimensional because they are stand-ins for anyone - the injustices they suffer could happen to you - and it's the same for everyone else because the enemies in kafka-verse conspires to persecute and punish unfeelingly, inhumanely and irrationally.
But what makes the stories in 'The Sons' so brilliant is that while the political-metaphorical context is as well constructed and oppressive as everything else he wrote - the walls are still closing in, the protagonist is still the victim of inevitable social forces etc. - the characters are so richly drawn, containing great psychological depths and emotional torrents, acting not only in reaction to attacks but also out of individual impulses. The introduction of complex characters into kafka-verse elevates his work to another level, to the point where these three stories are among the greatest ever written.
Metamorphisis is the best example of this union; as political and allegorical as anything he wrote but with the greatest attention to character too. There are so many rich seams of thematic meaning, but on first reading the most stunning aspect of Metamorphosis is the humanism on display. Gregor's family treat him with terrible cruelty but unlike the antagonists of his other stories they are fully fleshed, human, their actions understandable (if not forgivable). Their shoulders cave in under the relentless pressures of poverty and overwork, their souls become smaller and pettier and more desperate for escape, their cruelty and neglect therefore hardens and sharpens. They transform too; freedom from toil made them benevolent and exposure to it makes them mean. Meanwhile Gregor, who has only known the pain of being burdened, his identity consistly solely of being burdened, has to suddenly come to terms with the suffering of being a burden, of his identity violently reversing.
The ending is breathtaking; a profound and devastating potrayal of an essential truth; that hope and beauty for some springs directly from the suffering and demise of others. From his Zurau Aphorisms: 'The Spirit only becomes free at the point where it ceases to be invoked as a support.'
***********************************************
In The Penal Colony: Another of kafka's most significant works. I'm too squeamish to say I loved it but it's rich in philosophical meaning and intellectual heft.
***********************************************
A Country Doctor: some of the stories here are excellent while a few are wanting, or at least difficult for me to connect with.
The New Attorney - great imagery of the cosmic and mythical crashing into the mundane
A Country Doctor - abundant in style and atmosphere but I feel like I'm missing some vital context of meaning here; I don't really understand what A Country Doctor is about
In The Gallery - great, a far richer version of the lonely alienated musings story he explored so often in 'Looking to See'
A Leaf From The Past - I think this is one of Kafka's greatest works and I'm amazed it doesn't get more attention. An absurd and terrifying depiction of war.
At The Door Of The Law - my least favourite part from 'The Trial', here in short story form.
Jackals and Arabs - I feel completely unqualified to talk about this as I don't know what it's about, and it doesn't seem like anyone else has a clue either. if it's a critique of zionism itself then even aside from my idealogical disagreement it also just doesn't make any sense metaphorically. if it's a more nuanced critique of a western jewry ill-equipped to confront arab colonialism in their ancestral homeland then that's way more interesting but I'm still not convinced it actually makes any sense. it resists intepretation but also seems to beg for it, it's a weird one.
A Mine Visit - a fun if not particularly revelatory takedown of middle-management bureaucracy
The Next Village - I like this little pearl of faux-wisdom
A Message From The Emperor - another favourite of mine; the same profound historical/mythical imagery as 'The New Attorney' but much more powerful. Magical and resonant.
The Householder's Concern - no idea what this is about but I love that lil' odradek
Eleven Sons - meh
A Case of Fratricide - dark, gripping, menacing, and pounding with nihilist dread
A Dream - another of Kafka's greatest works; a horrifying, brilliant nightmare. I wish that the Simpsons had treehouse of horrored the shit out of this one.
A Report For An Academy - interesting but I fear that this is where Kafka starts to focus solely on constructing dry allegories for cultural/social phenomena and loses all interest in character or narrative.
***********************************************
A Fasting-Artist: see above. I did not enjoy this collection. It feels like Kafka has so much to say about the relationship between the artist and society and is desperate to get up on a soapbox and tell it, which is totally fine but if that's the case just write an essay! instead of letting fly in what would probably have been a great collection of essays on the artist and society Kafka translates his theories into 'stories' that have no interest in character, narrative, atmosphere, style and just feel so dry and lifeless, bereft of the elements of revelation and discovery so essential to great fiction.
First Sorrow - fine
A Little Woman - dreadful, probably the only work of Kafka's I've read that shouldn't have been published.
A Fasting Artist - the best in the collection by a country mile and much better than my rant above would suggest. It still has a lot of the weaknesses discussed and is unlikely to ever be a favourite of mine but it has a certain power, and is the only piece from this collection worthy of re-reading.
Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse People - just write an essay.
***********************************************
So that's one small collection I disliked, two fantastic larger ones, and four stories from 'The Judgement' to 'The Penal Colony' that are among the greatest and most important ever written.
(J.A. Underwood translation)
This collection is missing quite a few short stories, especially most of the 'The Great Wall of China' collection and the 'Description of a Struggle' translation. When I'm ready to revisit Kafka's short stories I'll be sure to check out the 'Complete Stories' collection (Schocken books, intro by John Updike and most of the translations by The Muirs.)
It may also be worth getting a separate smaller selected collection by a different translator; apparently the Metamorphosis translations by Hofmann and by Neugroschel are very good.
***********************************************
Looking To See: very little of this collection is mind-blowing but most of it is good, and witty, and containing seeds of greatness
Children in the Lane - gorgeous and dreamy and lyrical in a way that Kafka rarely attempted to be again. I wish he'd written more about childhood.
Unmasking a Confidence Trickster - hilarious
The Spur of the Moment Stroll - great, relatable
Decisions - same
The Excursion into the Mountains - no idea
The Bachelor's Lot - a genius and harrowing depiction of loneliness in just a handful of words
The Businessman - containing the same great critiques of over-work as 'The Trial' before getting pretty trippy in a way I don't fully understand but really enjoy
Wool Gathering at the Window - it seems like the narrator is musing on a wistful memory of the childhood enjoyed in the first story of this collection
The Way Home - one of Kafka's talents was to describe so perfectly the emotional journeys that some mundane walks can bring on.
Passers-by - a perfect little encapsulation of the horror and paranoia found in Kafka's world
The Passenger - a weird and powerful depiction of alienation
Dresses - meh
The Rebuff - hilarious and like exactly what every lonely straight guy in their teens/twenties thinks
For Jockeys to Ponder - some high quality shit-stirring
The Window on the Street - more great musings on loneliness
Wanting to be a Red Indian - the final line mentions a specifically 'well mown' stretch of moorland at which point my reading no longer makes any sense and I no longer have no idea what this story is meant to be about
The Trees - meh
Unhappiness - i'm sure there's emotional or philosophical depth here but unhappiness contains that common tendency of Kafka to write conversations between characters as if they're highly formal legal debates which occasionally works very well (e.g. The Trial, The Stoker) but usually I just don't connect with. in this case I don't think it fits the story.
***********************************************
The Sons Trilogy: the pinnacle of Kafka's art. I think it's fairly obvious that Kafka's best work comes from an extremely personal place and these three stories exemplify that.
The Judgement - absolutely fantastic; funny and dark and psychologically rich and full of bracing, grotesque terror. a fantastic ending too.
The Stoker - Kafka's greatest achievement after Metamorphosis, and by far his funniest work. Genius. (I didn't actually re-read the J.A. Underwood translation here as I'd only very recently read 'Amerika' translated by Michael Hofmann, with 'The Stoker' as its first chapter)
Metamorphosis - I was obviously aware that this was Kafka's most well-known work but I wasn't prepared for how emphatically it surpasses everything else he wrote. Most of Kafka's work is concerned less with character and more with environment, atmosphere, philosophical concepts and social-political metaphors. His protagonists have little inner life and generally fit into a consistent archetype of the flustered and aggrieved victim to whom things consistently happen. They act only in reaction to events they cannot control, only out of need and never out of desire. Even by the end of their story we barely know them as a person, they consist not of great depths but of hasty decisions and desperate moves. The characters populating these worlds are even shallower; they are impenetrable, unfathomable, illogical and unknowable, saying and doing things that appear senselessly cruel and arbitrary, as if adhering to secret bureaucratic policies not only in realms of bureacracy (law, policing, housing etc.) but even in the realm of interpersonal relationships.
This is, obviously, the point, and when it works (The Trial, much of Amerika, In The Penal Colony, A Dream) it works brilliantly. Our protagonists are not three-dimensional because they are stand-ins for anyone - the injustices they suffer could happen to you - and it's the same for everyone else because the enemies in kafka-verse conspires to persecute and punish unfeelingly, inhumanely and irrationally.
But what makes the stories in 'The Sons' so brilliant is that while the political-metaphorical context is as well constructed and oppressive as everything else he wrote - the walls are still closing in, the protagonist is still the victim of inevitable social forces etc. - the characters are so richly drawn, containing great psychological depths and emotional torrents, acting not only in reaction to attacks but also out of individual impulses. The introduction of complex characters into kafka-verse elevates his work to another level, to the point where these three stories are among the greatest ever written.
Metamorphisis is the best example of this union; as political and allegorical as anything he wrote but with the greatest attention to character too. There are so many rich seams of thematic meaning, but on first reading the most stunning aspect of Metamorphosis is the humanism on display. Gregor's family treat him with terrible cruelty but unlike the antagonists of his other stories they are fully fleshed, human, their actions understandable (if not forgivable). Their shoulders cave in under the relentless pressures of poverty and overwork, their souls become smaller and pettier and more desperate for escape, their cruelty and neglect therefore hardens and sharpens. They transform too; freedom from toil made them benevolent and exposure to it makes them mean. Meanwhile Gregor, who has only known the pain of being burdened, his identity consistly solely of being burdened, has to suddenly come to terms with the suffering of being a burden, of his identity violently reversing.
The ending is breathtaking; a profound and devastating potrayal of an essential truth; that hope and beauty for some springs directly from the suffering and demise of others. From his Zurau Aphorisms: 'The Spirit only becomes free at the point where it ceases to be invoked as a support.'
***********************************************
In The Penal Colony: Another of kafka's most significant works. I'm too squeamish to say I loved it but it's rich in philosophical meaning and intellectual heft.
***********************************************
A Country Doctor: some of the stories here are excellent while a few are wanting, or at least difficult for me to connect with.
The New Attorney - great imagery of the cosmic and mythical crashing into the mundane
A Country Doctor - abundant in style and atmosphere but I feel like I'm missing some vital context of meaning here; I don't really understand what A Country Doctor is about
In The Gallery - great, a far richer version of the lonely alienated musings story he explored so often in 'Looking to See'
A Leaf From The Past - I think this is one of Kafka's greatest works and I'm amazed it doesn't get more attention. An absurd and terrifying depiction of war.
At The Door Of The Law - my least favourite part from 'The Trial', here in short story form.
Jackals and Arabs - I feel completely unqualified to talk about this as I don't know what it's about, and it doesn't seem like anyone else has a clue either. if it's a critique of zionism itself then even aside from my idealogical disagreement it also just doesn't make any sense metaphorically. if it's a more nuanced critique of a western jewry ill-equipped to confront arab colonialism in their ancestral homeland then that's way more interesting but I'm still not convinced it actually makes any sense. it resists intepretation but also seems to beg for it, it's a weird one.
A Mine Visit - a fun if not particularly revelatory takedown of middle-management bureaucracy
The Next Village - I like this little pearl of faux-wisdom
A Message From The Emperor - another favourite of mine; the same profound historical/mythical imagery as 'The New Attorney' but much more powerful. Magical and resonant.
The Householder's Concern - no idea what this is about but I love that lil' odradek
Eleven Sons - meh
A Case of Fratricide - dark, gripping, menacing, and pounding with nihilist dread
A Dream - another of Kafka's greatest works; a horrifying, brilliant nightmare. I wish that the Simpsons had treehouse of horrored the shit out of this one.
A Report For An Academy - interesting but I fear that this is where Kafka starts to focus solely on constructing dry allegories for cultural/social phenomena and loses all interest in character or narrative.
***********************************************
A Fasting-Artist: see above. I did not enjoy this collection. It feels like Kafka has so much to say about the relationship between the artist and society and is desperate to get up on a soapbox and tell it, which is totally fine but if that's the case just write an essay! instead of letting fly in what would probably have been a great collection of essays on the artist and society Kafka translates his theories into 'stories' that have no interest in character, narrative, atmosphere, style and just feel so dry and lifeless, bereft of the elements of revelation and discovery so essential to great fiction.
First Sorrow - fine
A Little Woman - dreadful, probably the only work of Kafka's I've read that shouldn't have been published.
A Fasting Artist - the best in the collection by a country mile and much better than my rant above would suggest. It still has a lot of the weaknesses discussed and is unlikely to ever be a favourite of mine but it has a certain power, and is the only piece from this collection worthy of re-reading.
Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse People - just write an essay.
***********************************************
So that's one small collection I disliked, two fantastic larger ones, and four stories from 'The Judgement' to 'The Penal Colony' that are among the greatest and most important ever written.
November 10, 2015
An excellent way to get into Kafka, containing most if not all, his short-story's, and his masterpiece, the novella "Metamorphosis".
As good a writer as Kafka was, his novels are most definitely worth reading and some are indeed masterpieces in their own right ("The Trial" pops into mind), but as a short story writer his writing excelled and he is in my opinion one of the all-time-greatest when it comes to mastering the smaller formats. Including such great story's such as his, in his own opinion, first great literary work; "The Judgement", influenced by his strained relationship to his father, an often noted inspiration in many of Kafka's works. Other stories of note is such essential Kafka-reading such as "The Stoker", later included in his final novel "America" and one of my favourites, "In The Penal Colony, one Kafka's most horrific stories, "A Country Doctor" and "A Fasting Artist", both classics within the Kafka-catalogue, with many more of his shorter stories (some are a mere page long). The centrepiece in this collection is however his previously mentioned masterpiece, "Metamorphosis", arguably the best work Kafka ever wrote. Typical for Kafka it starts out in his strange take of "in medias res", with protagonist Gregor Samsa waking up one morning turned into a giant insect. We follow the effects it has upon his family from the eyes of the alienated and shunned Gregor, as he spends his days locked in his bedroom. Kafka's prose is famously outstanding, poignant and effective as few, a true master and one of the greatest writers ever produced!
As good a writer as Kafka was, his novels are most definitely worth reading and some are indeed masterpieces in their own right ("The Trial" pops into mind), but as a short story writer his writing excelled and he is in my opinion one of the all-time-greatest when it comes to mastering the smaller formats. Including such great story's such as his, in his own opinion, first great literary work; "The Judgement", influenced by his strained relationship to his father, an often noted inspiration in many of Kafka's works. Other stories of note is such essential Kafka-reading such as "The Stoker", later included in his final novel "America" and one of my favourites, "In The Penal Colony, one Kafka's most horrific stories, "A Country Doctor" and "A Fasting Artist", both classics within the Kafka-catalogue, with many more of his shorter stories (some are a mere page long). The centrepiece in this collection is however his previously mentioned masterpiece, "Metamorphosis", arguably the best work Kafka ever wrote. Typical for Kafka it starts out in his strange take of "in medias res", with protagonist Gregor Samsa waking up one morning turned into a giant insect. We follow the effects it has upon his family from the eyes of the alienated and shunned Gregor, as he spends his days locked in his bedroom. Kafka's prose is famously outstanding, poignant and effective as few, a true master and one of the greatest writers ever produced!
December 31, 2014
The many short stories of Franz in a distinct voice marked by Kafka of intense thoroughness of any kind of writing. Metamorphosis; Investigation of a Dog; The Great Wall of China; The Judgement; and many more.
December 5, 2014
The introduction written by Borges is beautiful.
Read
July 12, 2025favourite bits:
in the penal colony, a report for an academy, the unmasking of a confidence trickster, when the fasting-artist gets replaced by a panther, metamorphosis (particularly whenever he had to use his freaky hands), the excessive use of semi colons towards the end, the narrator getting hated on for no reason in the little woman, the narrator hating on his sons for no reason in eleven sons, the itysl type dad in the judgement, the characters in the stoker, the setting of a dream and the absurd mundaneness of the new attorney.
ps i stopped reading after in the penal colony for like 4 months for no reason i guess
in the penal colony, a report for an academy, the unmasking of a confidence trickster, when the fasting-artist gets replaced by a panther, metamorphosis (particularly whenever he had to use his freaky hands), the excessive use of semi colons towards the end, the narrator getting hated on for no reason in the little woman, the narrator hating on his sons for no reason in eleven sons, the itysl type dad in the judgement, the characters in the stoker, the setting of a dream and the absurd mundaneness of the new attorney.
ps i stopped reading after in the penal colony for like 4 months for no reason i guess
Read
August 6, 2023August 6, 2023: For future reference: I ended up reading The Judgment, The Metamorphosis and The Fasting-Artist in their entirety (and really enjoyed those), and part of In the Penal Colony and Josephine (which I both didn’t finish at this time).
January 23, 2024
Surreal and disconcerting. These short stories are perfect for when you want to read little but be left grappling with pain-inducing questions about the fragility of human relationships and our existence
December 5, 2020
Delightful stories - humanity bared, loved and loathed all at one
August 11, 2024
Hi ha històries molt bones però també n'hi ha que se m'han fet bolla.
March 17, 2017
Made me feel the dread of existence all over again. 10/10 would read again.
May 24, 2017
I'll keep this short. This is my first ever Kafka and I'm somewhat disappointed. The largely adored Metamorphosis wasn't for me, I found myself constantly uncomfortable and very bored. I liked some of the stories a lot (would recommend them with visible fists) but the rest just dulled my brain. I'm well aware of the images in this book, I understand its significance in the world, however, I found most of it unbearable to read. Two stars for the really (really) good stories in there.
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September 28, 2010A gift from G. Reading this author is enhanced by knowing a little of what the streets and cities of central Europe look and feel like.
April 29, 2014
Franz Kafka is adorable and his books are adorable. I can only get amazed. He's genious.
July 22, 2020
Kafkaesque
April 3, 2014
Tengo leídos tres de estos relatos y me tienen fascinada, me encanta.
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