Die Verwandlung (Routledge Foreign Literature Classics) - Hardcover

Kafka, Franz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1138139645 ISBN 13: 9781138139640

Publisher: Routledge, 2016

Synopsis

Franz Kafka is one of the most important figures in twentieth-century culture. The fascination of his work has long since reached international proportions, and the concept 'Kafkaesque' has entered the English Language as an everyday part of speech.
This new edition of Kafka's famous story contains a critical introduction and notes which help to explain how the author achieves his particular effects. The editors are concerned less with what the story means then with how it blocks and baffles its reader, provoking them into an interpretation through its combination of clues and counter-clues, its questions and its uncertainties. Careful attention is therefore paid to the 'openness' of the text, to point of view, and to Kafka's use of language. The editors also consider the important biographical and cultural influences which shaped the writing of the story, and they outline some of the very different ways in which it has been interpreted --biographically, socially and psychologically.
A select vocabulary, aimed at the demands of the sixth-form pupil, is also included, and the text itself is taken from the original hardback edition.

About this title

About the Author

Franz Kafka was born to Jewish parents in Bohemia in 1883. Kafka s father was a luxury goods retailer who worked long hours and as a result never became close with his son. Kafka s relationship with his father greatly influenced his later writing and directly informed his Brief an den Vater (Letter to His Father). Kafka had a thorough education and was fluent in both German and Czech. As a young man, he was hired to work at an insurance company where he was quickly promoted despite his desire to devote his time to writing rather than insurance. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote a great number of stories, letters, and essays, but burned the majority of his work before his death and requested that his friend Max Brod burn the rest. Brod, however, did not fulfill this request and published many of the works in the years following Kafka s death of tuberculosis in 1924. Thus, most of Kafka s works were published posthumously, and he did not live to see them recognized as some of the most important examples of literature of the twentieth century. Kafka s works are considered among the most significant pieces of existentialist writing, and he is remembered for his poignant depictions of internal conflicts with alienation and oppression. Some of Kafka s most famous works include The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1138139645
• ISBN 13: 9781138139640
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128
• Editor: Hutchinson Peter, Minden Michael