This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies; The Judgement, written in a single night of frenzied creativity; The Stoker, th[Bokinfo]

15 of Kafka's best known stories including the Metamorphosis, the Penal Colony and the Great Wall of China.

"Malcolm Pasley's translations, together with those in a forthcoming companion volume, The Transformation ('Metamorphosis') and Other Stories, are distinctive in that they illuminate Kafka's life as well as his art by presenting the works in the sequence in which they were written. Unlike other editions popularly available, this one has been prepared directly from the author's manuscripts. In its fidelity to the text it vastly alters our received versions of many of Kafka's greatest works, besides correcting numerous errors of detail. This volume contains the major short works left by Kafka, including Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor, The Great Wall of China and Investigations of a Dog, together with The Collected Aphorisms and He: Aphorisms from the 1920 Diary."--Publisher.

A companion volume to "The Great Wall of China and Other Short Works, " these new translations bring together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. This volume contains his most famous story. "The Transformation, " more popularly known as "Metamorphosis." Other works include "Meditation, " a collection of his earlier studies; "The Judgement, " written in a single night of frenzied creativity; "The Stoker, " the first chapter of a novel set in America; and "A Fasting Artist, " a collection of stories written towards the end of Kafka's life. There is also a fascinating occasional piece, "The Aeroplanes at Brescia, " Kafka's eye-witness account of an air display in 1909. Taken together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.

Zusammenfassung: A masterful new translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most fantastical and visionary short fiction

Kafka's "Meditation" (Betrachtung in German, sometimes translated as "Observation"), a collection of 18 short vignettes, serves as an evocative gateway into the psychological realms that would later dominate his more famous works. Here in Kafka's first published collection, we encounter the nascent forms of themes and techniques that would later define his literary legacy. These eighteen short prose pieces, composed between 1904 and 1912, represent more than mere literary sketches—they constitute a carefully orchestrated exploration of consciousness and perception that prefigures modernist preoccupations with fragmentary experience and psychological depth. This edition contains the following stories: Children on the Country Road Exposure of a Swindler The Sudden Walk Resolutions The Trip into the Mountains The Misfortune of the Bachelor The Merchant Distracted Looking The Way Home The Passers-By The Passenger Clothes The Rejection Food For Thought for Gentlemen Riders The Alley Window Desire to Become an Indian The Trees Unhappiness This modern translation from the original German is a fresh, accessible and beautifully rendered text that brings to life Kafka's great literary work. This edition contains extra amplifying material including an illuminating afterword, a timeline of Kafka's life and works alongside of the historical events which shaped his art, and a short biography, to place this work in its socio-historical context.