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"AX" EIΠE TO ΠONTIKI, "O KOΣMOΣ ΣTENEYEI KAΘE MEPA. ΣTHN APXH HTAN TOΣO ΠΛATYΣ ΠOY ΦOBOMOYN, ΣYNEXIΣA NA TPEXΩ, KAI XAPHKA OTAN EIΔA TEΛIKA ΣTO BAΘOΣ ΔEΞIA KAI APIΣTEPA TOIXOYΣ, AΛΛA OI MAKPINOI AYTOI TOIXOI ΣYΓKΛINOYN ME TOΣH TAXYTHTA ΠOY EΦTAΣA HΔH ΣTO TEΛEYTAIO ΔΩMATIO KAI EKEI ΣTH ΓΩNIA ΣTEKEI H ΠAΓIΔA, KAI TPEXΩ KATAΠANΩ THΣ"."ΔEN EXEIΣ ΠAPA NA AΛΛAΞEIΣ KATEYΘYNΣH" EIΠE H ΓATA KAI TO EΦAΓE.
- GenresFiction
278 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2012
3 people are currently reading
25 people want to read
About the author
Franz Kafka
3,230 books38.7k 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 His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime.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 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 30, 2017
Sadly I did not enjoy this book at all, although I "wanted" to like it. It's my first Kafka book and the first book ever to dislike so much. I highlight here that
-I did not like particularly the choice of stories of this specific edition (almost none of them ), and also, that
-I read them in Greek translation.
(You are welcome to write your comments on my review, I am up for discussion.)
The stories seem to me (with all due respect) to be the expression of anger, desperation (A Dream), hate (Jackals and Arabs), disgust (The Married Couple), pessimism (A little Fable) and fear (The Burrow) and boredom of a majorly depressed man (A Dream, The Bridge) with not much deeper meaning (IMHO) who did not want them published.
I could identify few metaphors in some of them (The Burrow, Poseidon) but they still seemed to me quite obvious with no poetic touch to them, and also very boring and incomplete .
So, I guess not everything is for everyone! I will give it another try by reading some of his published work, although the pessimism in his stories hit me hard!
Sorry Kafka...
-I did not like particularly the choice of stories of this specific edition (almost none of them ), and also, that
-I read them in Greek translation.
(You are welcome to write your comments on my review, I am up for discussion.)
The stories seem to me (with all due respect) to be the expression of anger, desperation (A Dream), hate (Jackals and Arabs), disgust (The Married Couple), pessimism (A little Fable) and fear (The Burrow) and boredom of a majorly depressed man (A Dream, The Bridge) with not much deeper meaning (IMHO) who did not want them published.
I could identify few metaphors in some of them (The Burrow, Poseidon) but they still seemed to me quite obvious with no poetic touch to them, and also very boring and incomplete .
So, I guess not everything is for everyone! I will give it another try by reading some of his published work, although the pessimism in his stories hit me hard!
Sorry Kafka...
November 10, 2018
Ο Κάφκα κι εγώ δεν τα έχουμε βρει ακόμη. Ειδικά «Το Κτίσμα» με εξόντωσε.
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April 12, 2022This is a Greek publication of a collection of short (to extremely short) stories by Kafka, most of which never published and taken from notebooks and diaries. Now, I don't have a favorite author, but if someone shoved a gun to my head and yelled "Who's your favorite author muthafucka? Answer me or die!", then "Kafka" is the immediate answer that would pop up in my brain.
And it's a fact, everything I've read by Kafka has been at least absolutely brilliant - yeah, it can go higher than that, but there's no word for it! However, this collection is the definition of the phrase "mixed bag"; and one that includes very few items that shine, at that.
You certainly got a few downright stellar pieces, like "Fürsprecher" ("Advocates", "Συνήγοροι") and "Der Geier" ("The Vulture", "Ο Γύπας"). This is Kafka at his best. You also got a couple of equally superb, but sadly unfinished stories. "Der Bau" ("The Burrow", "Το Κτίσμα"), which is the longest story, was placed last in the book, and would have been the ideal finishing if it wasn't for the fact that it gets cut midsentence, without ever coming to a conclusion. Same thing with "Blumfeld, Ein Älterer Junggeselle" ("Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor", "Ο Μπλούμφελντ, Ένας Μεσήλικας Εργένης"), which I found incredibly intriguing to begin with, but then took a turn that went nowhere, ending abruptly.
Finally, and unfortunately this applies to the majority of the stories, you got those who would have never seen the light of day if they weren't written by an author of Kafka's caliber. And that is not entirely strange or unexpected, after all most of those stories are scribbles in notebooks.
Oh, and it was certainly interesting to see a Greek God turned into a bureaucrat! Something only Kafka would be able to do.
And it's a fact, everything I've read by Kafka has been at least absolutely brilliant - yeah, it can go higher than that, but there's no word for it! However, this collection is the definition of the phrase "mixed bag"; and one that includes very few items that shine, at that.
You certainly got a few downright stellar pieces, like "Fürsprecher" ("Advocates", "Συνήγοροι") and "Der Geier" ("The Vulture", "Ο Γύπας"). This is Kafka at his best. You also got a couple of equally superb, but sadly unfinished stories. "Der Bau" ("The Burrow", "Το Κτίσμα"), which is the longest story, was placed last in the book, and would have been the ideal finishing if it wasn't for the fact that it gets cut midsentence, without ever coming to a conclusion. Same thing with "Blumfeld, Ein Älterer Junggeselle" ("Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor", "Ο Μπλούμφελντ, Ένας Μεσήλικας Εργένης"), which I found incredibly intriguing to begin with, but then took a turn that went nowhere, ending abruptly.
Finally, and unfortunately this applies to the majority of the stories, you got those who would have never seen the light of day if they weren't written by an author of Kafka's caliber. And that is not entirely strange or unexpected, after all most of those stories are scribbles in notebooks.
Oh, and it was certainly interesting to see a Greek God turned into a bureaucrat! Something only Kafka would be able to do.
June 5, 2021
A nice collection of many Kafka's short stories, some of them could be considered poems. The longest of them are Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor and the Burrow.
I can't say I liked all of the short novels here, some of them as much as I like Kafka, I have to admit are a little dull, like the last one, the Burrow. It's a story about a badger probably trying desperately to perfect his burrow and always finding shortcomings that delay its completion. Moreover this badger continually hears some strange noises that he takes as an antagonistic animal, increasing his stress and anxiety. The atmosphere is claustrophobic but I didn't enjoy much this story.
Quite the contrary I loved Blumfeld, an eldery bachelor, especially the first part of the story where Blumfeld tries desperately to confine two strange bouncing balls that make his life difficult. Lots of humor here and an amazing reading. The second part of the story where Blumfeld goes to work and gives orders to his subordinates isn't as good.
There are even some stories that are inspired by greek mythology (Poseidon, The silence of the sirens) and literature in general (The truth about Sancho Panza). I especially liked the poem-like works, A little fable and The next village.
I can't say I liked all of the short novels here, some of them as much as I like Kafka, I have to admit are a little dull, like the last one, the Burrow. It's a story about a badger probably trying desperately to perfect his burrow and always finding shortcomings that delay its completion. Moreover this badger continually hears some strange noises that he takes as an antagonistic animal, increasing his stress and anxiety. The atmosphere is claustrophobic but I didn't enjoy much this story.
Quite the contrary I loved Blumfeld, an eldery bachelor, especially the first part of the story where Blumfeld tries desperately to confine two strange bouncing balls that make his life difficult. Lots of humor here and an amazing reading. The second part of the story where Blumfeld goes to work and gives orders to his subordinates isn't as good.
There are even some stories that are inspired by greek mythology (Poseidon, The silence of the sirens) and literature in general (The truth about Sancho Panza). I especially liked the poem-like works, A little fable and The next village.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews