Franz Kafka - Collected Works

by Franz Kafka

Table of Contents:
- The Metamorphosis
- A Country Doctor
- A Hunger Artist
- A Report for an Academy
- An Imperial Message
- Before the Law
- In the Penal Colony
- Jackals and Arabs
- The Great Wall of China
- The Hunter Gracchus
- The Trial
- Up in the Gallery

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Short Stories

341 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2012

About the author

Franz 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 His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime.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.

Reviews

[Herb Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wildly variable in quality, as would be expected in such a collection. For Kafka completists.

[josh x · Rating 5 out of 5]

give us this day our daily bread and we will eat of it…

[Adam Shake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of German Author Franz Kafka. I'll admit, Metamorphosis was my favorite. This is literary reading and can be a little dry for some, but if you're looking for classic lit with some horror thrown in, this is good reading.

[Alex Harris-MacDuff · Rating 2 out of 5]

The shorter works and Metamorphosis are perfectly enjoyable. But the translation of The Trial in here is almost unreadable. It's shockingly stodgy prose. I'll have to seek out a much better translation of it. This review isn't really to do with the stories at all. I would recommend to any reader to do a bit more research into a quality translation than I did. I got this one because it was cheap on the Kindle Store. Not always the best idea.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The trial is hands down my favorite story. In the penal colony will stick with me for a while, and America made me want to throw this book out of the window because of pure frustration. My point is that the quality of stories are all over the place. Some stories were an absolute pain to get through. It’s emotionally not an easy read. But I think that’s exactly what I appreciate about it. His writing is very painful, hopeless, tense but it’s also incredibly honest. I have no doubt that all of his confusion, frustration and mistrust with the world bled onto every page.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Metamorphosis is CRAZY. AWESOME.

[Drew Caveney-holler · Rating 5 out of 5]

unlike anything I've ever read. sickening and disorientating

[Gabriel Henrique]

O maior

[Brooke Lenes · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first time reading Kafka. Not typically a fan of short stories but I liked these.

[Charles Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kafka is one of those authors I have been putting off reading. I'm glad I finally decided to dive in. Now that I've read him, I can see his influence on other writers. I think he's a big influence on the new weird fiction movement, more so than Lovecraft. That sense of being at the mercy of these massive uncaring influences we have no control over - not elder gods, just bureaucracies made up of people, which is frightening enough! My only beef is with this edition. It's cheap, but there are way too many transcription errors. It's a bit distracting. It might be good to spend a bit more for a better edition.

[solitaryfossil · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection. "The Metamorphosis" was of course very good, but I enjoyed "The Trial" especially. Some stories were only a few pages long, but I found the collection very interesting.

[Vernon Goddard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just an incredible collection. His influence on literature is immense…..

Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-language writer of novels and short stories, regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Kafka strongly influenced genres such as existentialism. Most of his works, such as "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), "Der Prozess" ("The Trial"), and "Das Schloss" ("The Castle"), are filled with the themes and archetypes of alienation, physical and psychological brutality, parent–child conflict, characters on a terrifying quest, labyrinths of bureaucracy, and mystical transformations.

Table of Contents:
- The Metamorphosis
- A Country Doctor
- A Hunger Artist
- A Report for an Academy
- An Imperial Message
- Before the Law
- In the Penal Colony
- Jackals and Arabs
- The Great Wall of China
- The Hunter Gracchus
- The Trial
- Up in the Gallery (less)

[James Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be fair, I only read a few stories, but wow. I'm totally obsessed with "In the Penal Colony." Kafka was a truly gifted writer, and I'm blown away that most of these works were written in Germany during WWI. I mean to dive back into this book.

[Sergiu · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories make me feel uncomfortable, which pushes me to think. It is important, in my opinion, to put yourself in very uncomfortable positions to get a different worldview. His life seems to be poured into the akwardeness and pain of his life.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid collection.

Many of the works demonstrate Maria's deep skill in describing characters and scenes. The Metamorphosis is the centerpiece, but the other works lend insight to his style and delivery.