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The Complete Short Stories
BRAND NEW, Exactly same ISBN as listed, Please double check ISBN carefully before ordering.
- GenresClassics
496 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1992
20 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
About the author
Franz Kafka
3,374 books39.1k followersFranz Kafka was a German-speaking writer from Prague whose work became one of the foundations of modern literature, even though he published only a small part of his writing during his lifetime. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka grew up amid German, Czech, and Jewish cultural influences that shaped his sense of displacement and linguistic precision. His difficult relationship with his authoritarian father left a lasting mark, fostering feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inadequacy that became central themes in his fiction and personal writings.
Kafka studied law at the German University in Prague, earning a doctorate in 1906. He chose law for practical reasons rather than personal inclination, a compromise that troubled him throughout his life. After university, he worked for several insurance institutions, most notably the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. His duties included assessing industrial accidents and drafting legal reports, work he carried out competently and responsibly. Nevertheless, Kafka regarded his professional life as an obstacle to his true vocation, and most of his writing was done at night or during periods of illness and leave. Kafka began publishing short prose pieces in his early adulthood, later collected in volumes such as Contemplation and A Country Doctor. These works attracted little attention at the time but already displayed the hallmarks of his mature style, including precise language, emotional restraint, and the application of calm logic to deeply unsettling situations. His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. They depict protagonists trapped within opaque systems of authority, facing accusations, rules, or hierarchies that remain unexplained and unreachable. Themes of alienation, guilt, bureaucracy, law, and punishment run throughout Kafka’s work. His characters often respond to absurd or terrifying circumstances with obedience or resignation, reflecting his own conflicted relationship with authority and obligation. Kafka’s prose avoids overt symbolism, yet his narratives function as powerful metaphors through structure, repetition, and tone. Ordinary environments gradually become nightmarish without losing their internal coherence. Kafka’s personal life was marked by emotional conflict, chronic self-doubt, and recurring illness. He formed intense but troubled romantic relationships, including engagements that he repeatedly broke off, fearing that marriage would interfere with his writing. His extensive correspondence and diaries reveal a relentless self-critic, deeply concerned with morality, spirituality, and the demands of artistic integrity. In his later years, Kafka’s health deteriorated due to tuberculosis, forcing him to withdraw from work and spend long periods in sanatoriums. Despite his illness, he continued writing when possible. He died young, leaving behind a large body of unpublished manuscripts. Before his death, he instructed his close friend Max Brod to destroy all of his remaining work. Brod ignored this request and instead edited and published Kafka’s novels, stories, and diaries, ensuring his posthumous reputation.
The publication of Kafka’s work after his death established him as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The term Kafkaesque entered common usage to describe situations marked by oppressive bureaucracy, absurd logic, and existential anxiety. His writing has been interpreted through existential, religious, psychological, and political perspectives, though Kafka himself resisted definitive meanings. His enduring power lies in his ability to articulate modern anxiety with clarity and restraint.
Kafka studied law at the German University in Prague, earning a doctorate in 1906. He chose law for practical reasons rather than personal inclination, a compromise that troubled him throughout his life. After university, he worked for several insurance institutions, most notably the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. His duties included assessing industrial accidents and drafting legal reports, work he carried out competently and responsibly. Nevertheless, Kafka regarded his professional life as an obstacle to his true vocation, and most of his writing was done at night or during periods of illness and leave. Kafka began publishing short prose pieces in his early adulthood, later collected in volumes such as Contemplation and A Country Doctor. These works attracted little attention at the time but already displayed the hallmarks of his mature style, including precise language, emotional restraint, and the application of calm logic to deeply unsettling situations. His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. They depict protagonists trapped within opaque systems of authority, facing accusations, rules, or hierarchies that remain unexplained and unreachable. Themes of alienation, guilt, bureaucracy, law, and punishment run throughout Kafka’s work. His characters often respond to absurd or terrifying circumstances with obedience or resignation, reflecting his own conflicted relationship with authority and obligation. Kafka’s prose avoids overt symbolism, yet his narratives function as powerful metaphors through structure, repetition, and tone. Ordinary environments gradually become nightmarish without losing their internal coherence. Kafka’s personal life was marked by emotional conflict, chronic self-doubt, and recurring illness. He formed intense but troubled romantic relationships, including engagements that he repeatedly broke off, fearing that marriage would interfere with his writing. His extensive correspondence and diaries reveal a relentless self-critic, deeply concerned with morality, spirituality, and the demands of artistic integrity. In his later years, Kafka’s health deteriorated due to tuberculosis, forcing him to withdraw from work and spend long periods in sanatoriums. Despite his illness, he continued writing when possible. He died young, leaving behind a large body of unpublished manuscripts. Before his death, he instructed his close friend Max Brod to destroy all of his remaining work. Brod ignored this request and instead edited and published Kafka’s novels, stories, and diaries, ensuring his posthumous reputation.
The publication of Kafka’s work after his death established him as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The term Kafkaesque entered common usage to describe situations marked by oppressive bureaucracy, absurd logic, and existential anxiety. His writing has been interpreted through existential, religious, psychological, and political perspectives, though Kafka himself resisted definitive meanings. His enduring power lies in his ability to articulate modern anxiety with clarity and restraint.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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January 22, 2026I'll write reviews of Kafka's famous works/the one's I liked. The term "Kafkaesque" describes absurd, oppressive systems and the individual's futile struggle to understand or escape them. It goes beyond the bureaucracy to reflect existential dread and the human resilience.
The Hunger Artist:
There’s a man who can fast for incredibly long periods and is admired for it. His supervisor restricts his fasts to forty days, but when public interest decreases, he is finally free to starve himself completely and achieve the artistic greatness he has always wanted to. However, at the story’s end, he tells them not to admire him, revealing the truth: he fasted not out of discipline or dedication, but because he never found any food he liked. On the surface, this might seem like a critique of self-imposed, unexplained, and purposeless suffering but in reality, the hunger artist’s extreme abstinence arises from his dislike to food rather than any willpower.
I guess you could say finally he was honest with himself and the supervisor at the verge of death, not that it matters. He had a lifelong obsession over himself that amounted to nothing. As humans, we construct impossible standards for ourselves, sustaining them through only self-deception.
But what was really the cherry on top was the hunger artist getting replaced by a young, healthy panther who was everything the hunger artist was not.
"The joy of life streamed...it was impossible to not stand the shock of it" the panther overwhelms the crowd with the excess of life, while the hunger artist repelled them with the excess of absence. Kafka represents two extremes, but the latter is only acceptable because society tolerates pain only when it can be consumed easily.
The Hunger Artist:
There’s a man who can fast for incredibly long periods and is admired for it. His supervisor restricts his fasts to forty days, but when public interest decreases, he is finally free to starve himself completely and achieve the artistic greatness he has always wanted to. However, at the story’s end, he tells them not to admire him, revealing the truth: he fasted not out of discipline or dedication, but because he never found any food he liked. On the surface, this might seem like a critique of self-imposed, unexplained, and purposeless suffering but in reality, the hunger artist’s extreme abstinence arises from his dislike to food rather than any willpower.
I guess you could say finally he was honest with himself and the supervisor at the verge of death, not that it matters. He had a lifelong obsession over himself that amounted to nothing. As humans, we construct impossible standards for ourselves, sustaining them through only self-deception.
But what was really the cherry on top was the hunger artist getting replaced by a young, healthy panther who was everything the hunger artist was not.
"The joy of life streamed...it was impossible to not stand the shock of it" the panther overwhelms the crowd with the excess of life, while the hunger artist repelled them with the excess of absence. Kafka represents two extremes, but the latter is only acceptable because society tolerates pain only when it can be consumed easily.
January 24, 2024
A nightmarish journey... as it was described about Edgar Allan poe the word Arabesque and Grotesque were best suit to describe this absurd, exhausting, and madness in Kafka's works some are quiet confusing you just get out from it with your hair standing up in the sky.
I can't help it whether to say I like Franz kafka or I hate him...
Everyone has had moments when they feel that they cannot explain what has happened to them or feel that they are not in control of a particular situation in their lives...
It's hard to explain how you feel how you think like a gloomy fog blocking the way to you. You can't explain yourself nor understand it.
As I researched about Mr. Kafka's life I can understand the common theme that connects the stories and the characters; it was a way related to His helplessness with controlling his own life. With his helplessness he made a genius pieces ( I wondered if he was aware of it)
enabling the audience to question whether they have free will or are simply pawns in some farcical game.
However, regardless of the conclusion you can make by observation of his works, anything that comes after will remain absurd since there is no way of guaranteeing one’s degree of freedom,
as well in that it comes to observe the existential angst of one's reality all of this conflicts from trying to reach the fullest degrees of freedom to the full consciousness of the real world drives the individual into madness by losing their sense of their place in the world.
More like of how Mr. Kafka felt and many others did; the fact that I'm full awar of that most of his works aren't complete makes alot of sense...
On how hard it is to open the gate of your mind that had enough from this tough world.
I can't help it whether to say I like Franz kafka or I hate him...
Everyone has had moments when they feel that they cannot explain what has happened to them or feel that they are not in control of a particular situation in their lives...
It's hard to explain how you feel how you think like a gloomy fog blocking the way to you. You can't explain yourself nor understand it.
As I researched about Mr. Kafka's life I can understand the common theme that connects the stories and the characters; it was a way related to His helplessness with controlling his own life. With his helplessness he made a genius pieces ( I wondered if he was aware of it)
enabling the audience to question whether they have free will or are simply pawns in some farcical game.
However, regardless of the conclusion you can make by observation of his works, anything that comes after will remain absurd since there is no way of guaranteeing one’s degree of freedom,
as well in that it comes to observe the existential angst of one's reality all of this conflicts from trying to reach the fullest degrees of freedom to the full consciousness of the real world drives the individual into madness by losing their sense of their place in the world.
More like of how Mr. Kafka felt and many others did; the fact that I'm full awar of that most of his works aren't complete makes alot of sense...
On how hard it is to open the gate of your mind that had enough from this tough world.
October 1, 2025
quite a read! I mean metamorphosis, the country doctor, penal colony. even lesser known ones like investigations of a dog and the burrow were amazing! what an insight, what melancholy... just be patient, my advice. and read each line carefully... it's not Stephen King you're reading. also they will be felt long after being read... especially likes of the burrow and such, returning back to you... haunt you. reading experience will be slightly boring maybe and claustrophobic... ooh and the hunger artist... such an insight of psychology I say, for each individual story. after a month or two just revisit them all in your mind and you wouldn't be able to figure your favourite out of them... maybe least favourite is possible. if you're not reading it... you're missing something!
June 3, 2024
In mijn laatste droom zat ik gevangen in een gehucht tweehonderd meter buiten de ring van Brugge, rond mij een zwerm vierende dertigers, dronken en luidruchtig. Geen ontkomen aan, niemand die helpt, de bakker geeft de alcoholische bakfietsmuggen meer bier en de toeristische dienst heeft enkel geologische kaarten van de velden buiten het dorp. Dankje K.
June 23, 2024
Favorites from the short stories:
- The burrow
- The metamorphosis
- The village schoolmaster
- The warden of the Tomb
- A hunger artist
And from the shorter stories:
Poseidon, rejection, a dream, the next village, the bucket rider, the silence of the sirens, the vulture, fellowship, home-coming
- The burrow
- The metamorphosis
- The village schoolmaster
- The warden of the Tomb
- A hunger artist
And from the shorter stories:
Poseidon, rejection, a dream, the next village, the bucket rider, the silence of the sirens, the vulture, fellowship, home-coming
March 18, 2025
Pretty pedantic but overall enjoyable. It’s like 400+ pages but you only really need to read the metamorphosis, the penal colony, and the hunger artist tbh. The short short stories are basically poems and the longer incomplete ones will have suddenly say like [12 pages missing] on page three.
January 2, 2025
Beautiful collection of stories! Though some are confusing, it has been a great book and kafka always hits the spot :)
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews