The Great Wall of China

This volume of short works is a companion to Malcolm Pasley's translation of Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Taken together they illuminate Kafka's life and art by presenting works for the first time in the sequence in which they were written and drawing directly on his manuscripts. Here are the major short pieces left by Kafka and published after his death, including The Great Wall of China, Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor, Investigations of a Dog and his great sequences of aphorisms, with fables and parables on subjects ranging from the legend of Prometheus to the Tower of Babel. Allegorical, disturbing and possessing a dream-like clarity, these writings are quintessential Kafka.