Franz Kafka: Short Stories

by Franz Kafka

This collection has Kafka's more than fifty best short stories. This is the most comprehensive and recent translation of Franz Kafka's stories. Scrupulously naturalistic on the surface, uncanny in their depths, these stories represent the achieved art of a modern master who had the gift of making our problematic spiritual life palpable and real. Few Stories which are part of this collections are; " Children On A Country Road", "The Tress", "Clothes", "The Way Home", "On The Tram", "A Dream", "Up In The Gallary", "Jackals and Arabs", "Eleven Sons", "At Night", "The Problem Of Our Laws", "The Test", "The Vulture", "The Married Couple", "Postscript".

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

113 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2020

About the author

Prague-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.

Reviews

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining listening 🎶🔰

This was a free novella e-book from Amazon.

This was not what I expected but interesting 👀 number of short stories. Give it a try it may work for you. 2023 👒😀☺😮

[Dikshyanta Uprety · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book contained numerous famous short stories written by Franz Kafka. However, the two stories that stood out the most were "In the penal colony" and "The judgement". Kafka is leagues apart from other writers in two major aspects of writing. Firstly, he is extraordinarily adept at persistently centering characters around traits. For example, the officer in the penal colony is given a trait of dissatisfaction at losing his power so firmly held when he used to work under the previous commander. The character is given a unique resistance to change due to which he views the new bureaucracy with utter disdain. Kafka uses dialogues, expression and actions to constantly assign these traits to these characters with greater intensity.

Secondly, he is able to display any changes to characters with equal grandeur and agility. Metamorphosis is a cutting contrast to all the other stories whereby however, characters are provided with changing traits. The main character's sister who is given such a loving persona at the beginning of the story is completely morphed into a spiteful character towards the end, who vehemently argues the family to get rid of the brother who she stood so firmly for in the beginning. Even the protagonist's feelings suffer a drastic shift when his pity for the family and a sense of pride of belonging changes to disdain and feelings of estrangement in the latter part of the story.

[Mary Ellen Gambutti]

Classics.

[Hal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very Kafkaesque

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

bracho.