Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born in Prague, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature, his works fuse elements of realism and the fantastique, and typically feature isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surreal predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. The term Kafkaesque has entered the lexicon to describe situations like those depicted in his writings. His best-known works include the novella The Metamorphosis (1915) and the novels The Trial (1924) and The Castle (1926). He is also celebrated for his brief fables and aphorisms, which frequently incorporated comedic elements alongside the darker themes of his longer works. His work has widely influenced artists, philosophers, composers, filmmakers, literary historians, religious scholars, and cultural theorists.
Complete Bibliography
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Main Works
43 Books
Der Proceß
Byzantine and claustrophobic novel of a man arrested by the secret police and charged with an unspecified crime. Unable to defend himself and disorientated by the legal process at work around him the man soon becomes apathetic and acquiescent, accepting his eventual sentence as inevitable.
Das Urteil
Das Urteil ist eine 1912 entstandene und 1913 veröffentlichte Novelle von Franz Kafka. Die Geschichte hat den Charakter eines Kurzromans und untersucht die Beziehung zwischen einem Mann und seinem Vater.
Das Schloß
The Castle is the story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, and reason and nonsense, K.'s struggles in the absurd, labyrinthine world where he finds himself seem to reveal an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. Kafka began The Castle in 1922 and it was never finished, yet this, the last of his three great novels, draws fascinating conclusions that make it feel strangely complete.
Amerika
"Franz Kafka's diaries and letters suggest that his fascination with America grew out of a desire to break away from his native Prague, even if only in his imagination. Kafka died before he could finish what he liked to call his ''American novel," but he clearly entitled it Der Verschollene in a letter to his fiancee, Felice Bauer, in 1912. Kafka began writing the novel that fall and wrote the last completed chapter in 1914, but it wasn't until 1927, three years after his death, that Amerika - the title that Kafka's friend and literary executor Max Brod gave his edited version of the unfinished manuscript - was published in Germany by Kurt Wolff Verlag. An English translation by Willa and Edwin Muir was published in Great Britain in 1932 and in the United States in 1946." "Over the last thirty years, an international team of Kafka scholars has been working on German-language critical editions of all of Kafka's writings, going back to the original manuscripts and notes, correcting trans
Proměna
The great wall of China
"A wondrous engineering feat rarely matched in the history of the world, the 1,500-mile-long Great Wall stretches the whole length of China's northern borders from the shores of the Pacific to the Gobi Desert in central Asia. It is so prominent on earth that astronauts say it is the only manmade structure they can see with the naked eye from space. Originally, the 2,000-year-old Great Wall was constructed to shield the ancient empire from barbarians by shutting itself away from the outside world, but today it is regarded as the symbol of modern China, attracting hordes of tourists from around the world.". "This sumptuously illustrated book offers 165 images portraying the Great Wall as never before. This is an exploration of what lies behind the fascination of the Great Wall as well as an examination of two millennia of Chinese culture."--BOOK JACKET.
Erzählungen und kleine Prosa
"Translated by Joachim Neugroschel, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories is widely recognized as the preeminent English-language anthology of Kafka's stories. These translations illuminate one of this century's most controversial writers and have made Kafka's work accessible to a whole new generation. This classic collection of forty-one great short works - including such timeless pieces of modern fiction as "The Judgment" and "The Stoker" - now includes two new stories, "First Sorrow" and "The Hunger Artist.""--BOOK JACKET.
Parables and paradoxes
Short stories
This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he 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', the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, 'The Aeroplanes at Brescia', Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.
The penal colony
The diaries of Franz Kafka
These diaries cover the years 1910 to 1923, the year before Kafka’s death at the age of forty. They provide a penetrating look into life in Prague and into Kafka’s accounts of his dreams, his feelings for the father he worshipped and the woman he could not bring himself to marry, his sense of guilt, and his feelings of being an outcast. They offer an account of a life of almost unbearable intensity.
Tagebücher, 1910-1923
Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka
Briefe an Milena
**Letters to Milena** is a book collecting some of Franz Kafka's letters to Milena Jesenská from 1920 to 1923. Publication history ----------------------- The letters were originally published in German in 1952 as Briefe an Milena, edited by Willy Haas, who decided to delete certain passages which he thought might hurt people who were still alive at the time. The collection was first published in English by Schocken Books in 1953, translated by Tania and James Stern. A new German edition, restoring the passages Haas had deleted, was published in 1986, followed by a new English translation by Philip Boehm in 1990. This edition includes some of Milena's letters to Max Brod, as well as four essays by her and an obituary for Kafka. )
Brief an den Vater
**Letter to His Father** is the name usually given to the letter Franz Kafka wrote to his father Hermann in November 1919, indicting him for his emotionally abusive and hypocritical behavior towards him. )
Briefe, 1902-1924
Description of a struggle
Die Verwandlung
Briefe an Felice und andere Korrespondenz aus der Verlobungszeit
Franz Kafka
These diaries cover the years 1910 to 1923, the year before Kafka’s death at the age of forty. They provide a penetrating look into life in Prague and into Kafka’s accounts of his dreams, his feelings for the father he worshipped and the woman he could not bring himself to marry, his sense of guilt, and his feelings of being an outcast. They offer an account of a life of almost unbearable intensity.
Briefe an Ottla und die Familie
Complete stories and parables
Basic Kafka
Cartas Al Padre
La carta más famosa del siglo XX jamás llegó a su destinatario. Ni siquiera fue enviada. La escribió Franz Kafka de un tirón entre el 4 y el 20 de noviembre de 1919, y está dirigida a su padre, Hermann Kafka, comerciante judío en la ciudad de Praga. Escrita en un estilo que su propio autor calificó de abogado, la carta es un memorial de las relaciones que había mantenido con su padre desde su nacimiento.
The blue octavo notebooks
The Transformation
Lettre au père
Give it up!
Nine short works by the early 20th Century German novelist presented in comic-book format. The black-and-white illustrations match the bleak subject of the stories which include The Helmsman, A Fratricide and The Trees.
A Hunger Artist (Short Prose of Franz Kafka Series)
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Gregor Samsa hates his job. He works himself to exhaustion as a traveling salesman to support a family that takes him for granted. One morning, his whole life changes. He wakes up to discover that he has turned into a giant insect. As he and his family come to grips with the fantastical event, The Metamorphosis explores themes of alienation, family loyalty, and unconditional love.
The metamorphosis and related readings
Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Gregor Samsa hates his job. He works himself to exhaustion as a traveling salesman to support a family that takes him for granted. One morning, his whole life changes. He wakes up to discover that he has turned into a giant insect. As he and his family come to grips with the fantastical event, The Metamorphosis explores themes of alienation, family loyalty, and unconditional love.
La Metamorfosis
The Zürau aphorisms of Franz Kafka
Letter to My Father
Kafka gave the letter to his mother to deliver to his father but she never did.The original letter, 45 pages long, was typewritten by Kafka and corrected by hand. Two and a half additional pages were written by hand. In 1954, the letter, translated into English by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins, was published by Schocken Books in Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings. In 1966, Schocken Books published the same translation in a bilingual edition. The letter begins as follows: "Dearest Father, You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you. As usual, I was unable to think of any answer to your question, partly for the very reason that I am afraid of you, and partly because an explanation of the grounds for this fear would mean going into far more details than I could even approximately keep in mind while talking. And if I now try to give you an answer in writing, it will still be very incomplete.
Cartas a Milena
Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis, first published in 1915, is the most famous of Kafka's works, along with The Trial and The Castle. The story begins when a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. Curiously, his condition does not arouse surprise in his family, who merely despise it as an impending burden. As with all of Kafka's works, The Metamorphosis is open to a wide range of interpretations. Most obvious are themes relating to society's treatment of those who are different, the loneliness of isolation, and the absurdity of the human condition.
A metamorfose
Letters to Milena
In the Penal Colony
Metamorphosis Annotated
Metamorfosis
Diaries of Franz Kafka
These diaries cover the years 1910 to 1923, the year before Kafka’s death at the age of forty. They provide a penetrating look into life in Prague and into Kafka’s accounts of his dreams, his feelings for the father he worshipped and the woman he could not bring himself to marry, his sense of guilt, and his feelings of being an outcast. They offer an account of a life of almost unbearable intensity.