Franz Kafka

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes." With its startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing-though absurdly comic-meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."

The Metamorphosis

Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. This new edition is based upon the work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it. In his brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproduces the distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel that is as full of energy and power as it was when it was first written.

A New Translation Based on the Restored Text

The Trial

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Arriving in a village to take up the position of land surveyor for the mysterious lord of a castle, the character known as K. finds himself in a bitter and baffling struggle to contact his new employer and go about his duties. As the villagers and the Castle officials block his efforts at every turn, K.’s consuming quest–quite possibly a self-imposed one–to penetrate the inaccessible heart of the Castle and take its measure is repeatedly frustrated. Kafka once suggested that the would-be surveyor in The Castle is driven by a wish “to get clear about ultimate things,” an unrealizable desire that provided the driving force behind all of Kafka’s dazzlingly uncanny fictions. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir From the Hardcover edition.

A New Translation, Based on the Restored Text

The Castle

Philip Boehm

A new translation of Kafka's letters to his Czech translator, Milena Jesenska, includes materials previously unpublished as well as some of her letters and essays

Letters to Milena

Letter to His Father / Brief An Den Vater

The last book published during Kafka's lifetime, A Hunger Artist (1924) explores many of the themes that were close to him: spiritual poverty, asceticism, futility, and the alienation of the modern artist. He edited the manuscript just before his death, and these four stories are some of his best known and most powerful work, marking his maturity as a writer. In addition to "First Sorrow," "A Little Woman," and "Josephine, the Singer," is the title story, "A Hunger Artist," which has been called by the critic Heinz Politzer "a perfection, a fatal fulfillment that expresses Kafka's desire for permanence." The three volumes Twisted Spoon has published: Contemplation, A Country Doctor, and A Hunger Artist represent the collections of stories that Kafka had published during his lifetime. Though each volume has its own distinctive character, they have most often appeared in English in collected editions. They are presented here as separate editions, in new translations, each with its own illustrator from the Prague community.

A Hunger Artist

Depicts the tragicomic misadventures of a young immigrant in New York.

Amerika

Journal entries share Kafka's thoughts and observations during the ten years before his death

1910-1923

The diaries

The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death. With the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka’s narrative work is included in this volume.

The Complete Stories

roman

Dönüşüm

'The condemned man looked so doggishly submissive, it really seemed as if one might allow him to roam the slopes freely, and only needed to whistle when it was time for the execution, and he would come.' Kafka transformed the possibilities of the short story, his unique imagination giving his dark tales a sense of dream-like logic and unreality, in which their horrors are humorous and unease pervades. In these two stories, a traveller is shown the workings of an elaborate machine with a bloody purpose, and a son awakens unimagined resentments in his father. This book includes In the Penal Colony and The Judgement.

In the Penal Colony

رسائل إلى ميلينا

Voici l'histoire ... excessivement répugnante, dit l'auteur d'un homme qui se réveille changé en cancrelat. Cette transformation est le châtiment imaginaire que Kafka s'inflige. Et son personnage est celui qui ne peut plus aimer, ni être aimé.

La métamorphose

The Metamorphosis begins almost comically. A man wakes up to find he has turned into an insect. But the claustrophobic, dirty room and the increasingly distressed narrator soon turn this into a tale of slow horror. Most horrifying of all is his family's reaction to his metamorphosis and their final solution to the problem.

رواية

التحول

First published in 1919, among the 14 stories contained in this volume are some of Kafka's most renowned shorter works: "Before the Law," "Jackals and Arabs," "A Report for an Academy." As with the other volumes published by Twisted Spoon Press, Kevin Blahut has produced a translation that is contemporary and fresh, capturing perfectly the ironic humor found in these stories. Though each volume has its own distinctive character, they have most often appeared in English in omnibus editions. They are presented here as separate editions, in new translations, each with its own illustrator from the Prague community.

A Country Doctor

Investigations of a Dog (German: Forschungen eines Hundes) is a short story by Franz Kafka written in 1922. It was published posthumously in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer (Berlin, 1931). Told from the perspective of a dog, the story concerns the nature and limits of knowledge, by way of the dog's inquiries into the practices of his culture. Investigations of a Dog was written in September and October 1922, soon after Kafka ended work on his unfinished novel The Castle. Similar to other Kafka stories such as A Report to an Academy, Josephine the Singer, and The Burrow, the protagonist is an animal.

Investigations of a Dog

Felice Bauer

Kafka's five-year correspondence with the woman he claimed to love reveals much about his complex personality and his literary life.

Franz Kafka

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