The Complete Stories (The Schocken Kafka Library) - Softcover

Franz Kafka

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805210555 ISBN 13: 9780805210552

Publisher: Schocken Books, 1995

Synopsis

How many writers get their own adjective? The work of this terminally alienated master narrator of the subconscious demanded a new descriptor; I guess they gave up and just settled on "Kafkaesque." But if you ever wonder what the original Kafkaesque work was, take a look here. The book contains all of Kafka's short and longer stories -- everything but his three novels. Most of these stories weren't even published during the author's lifetime. The widely-anthologized The Metamorphosis is here, wherein Gregor Samsa awakes from uneasy dreams to find himself insectoidally transformed, as are equally lovely pieces like A Hunger Artist, A Country Doctor and A Little Woman. The only available collection that brings together all of Kafka's stories--those published during his lifetime and those released after his death.

About this title

Review

"[Kafka] spoke for millions in their new unease; a century after his birth, he seems the last holy writer, and the supreme fabulist of modern man's cosmic predicament."
--from the Foreword by John Updike

"The distinction Kafka, or his heroes, draw between this world and the world does not imply that there are two different worlds, only that our habitual conceptions of reality are not the true conception."
--W. H. Auden

"An important book, valuable in itself and absolutely fascinating. The stories are dreamlike, allegorical, symbolic, parabolic, grotesque, ritualistic, nasty, lucent, extremely personal, ghoulishly detached, exquisitely comic, numinous, and prophetic."
--The New York Times

About the Author

Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including "The Metamorphosis," "The Judgment," and "The Stoker." He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.

Edition details

• Publisher: Schocken Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0805210555
• ISBN 13: 9780805210552
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 488