For the 125th anniversary of Kafka's birth, an astonishing new translation of his best-known stories, in a spectacular graphic package For all his fame, Franz Kafka published only a small number of stories in his lifetime. This new translation of those stories, by Michael Hofmann, one of the most respected German-to-English translators at work today, makes Kafka's best-known works available to a new generation of readers. "Metamorphosis" gives full expression to the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary depth of his imagination.

Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is 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, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.

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. --penguinrandomhouse.com Two Introductory parables: Before the law -- Imperial message -- Longer stories: Description of a struggle -- Wedding preparations in the country -- Judgment -- Metamorphosis -- In the penal colony -- Village schoolmaster (The giant mole) -- Blumfeld, and elderly bachelor -- Warden of the tomb -- Country doctor -- Hunter Gracchus -- Hunter Gracchus: A fragment -- Great Wall of China -- News of the building of the wall: A fragment -- Report to an academy -- Report to an academy: Two fragments -- Refusal -- Hunger artist -- Investigations of a dog -- Little woman -- The burrow -- Josephine the singer, or the mouse folk -- Children on a country road -- The trees -- Clothes -- Excursion into the mountains -- Rejection -- The street window -- The tradesman -- Absent-minded window-gazing -- The way home -- Passers-by -- On the tram -- Reflections for gentlemen-jockeys -- The wish to be a red Indian -- Unhappiness -- Bachelor's ill luck -- Unmasking a confidence trickster -- The sudden walk -- Resolutions -- A dream -- Up in the gallery -- A fratricide -- The next village -- A visit to a mine -- Jackals and Arabs -- The bridge -- The bucket rider -- The new advocate -- An old manuscript -- The knock at the manor gate -- Eleven sons -- My neighbor -- A crossbreed (A sport) -- The cares of a family man -- A common confusion -- The truth about Sancho Panza -- The silence of the sirens -- Prometheus -- The city coat of arms -- Poseidon -- Fellowship -- At night -- The problem of our laws -- The conscripton of troops -- The test -- The vulture -- The helmsman -- The top -- A little fable -- Home-coming -- First sorrow -- The departure -- Advocates -- The married couple -- Give it up! -- On parables.

A superb new translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most frightening and visionary short fiction Strange beasts, night terrors, absurd bureaucrats and sinister places abound in this collection of stories by Franz Kafka. Some are less than a page long, others more substantial; all were unpublished in his lifetime. These matchless short works range from the gleeful miniature horror 'Little Fable' to the off-kilter humour of 'Investigations of a Dog', and from the elaborate waking nightmare of 'Building the Great Wall of China' to the creeping unease of 'The Burrow', where a nameless creature's labyrinthine hiding place turns into a trap of fear and paranoia.

It is likely that these journals will be regarded as one of Kafka's] major literary works; his life and personality were perfectly suited to the diary form, and in these pages he reveals what he customarily hidfrom the world." -- New Yorker "What seems to hold the diaries] together is a kind of ruthless honesty and self-awareness." -- New York Times Though Franz Kafka is one of the greatest and most widely read and discussed authors of the twentieth century, and continues to be a tremendous influence on artists of our time, he remains an elusive figure, his life and work open toendless interpretation. These diaries reveal the essential Kafka behind the enigmatic artist. Covering the period from 1910 to 1923, the year before Kafka's death at the age of forty, they provide apenetrating look into Kafka's world -- notes on life in Prague, accounts of his dreams, his feelings for the father he worshipped and for the woman he could not bring himself to marry, his sense of guilt and of being anoutcast, and his struggles and triumphs in expressing himself as a writer. Now, for the first time in this country, the complete diaries of Franz Kafka are available in one volume. They are not onlyindispensable to an understanding of Kafka the man and the artist, but are a compulsively readable, haunting account of a life of almost unbearable intensity. "From the Trade Paperback edition."

The essential philosophical writings of one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers are now gathered into a single volume with an introduction and afterword by the celebrated writer and publisher Roberto Calasso. Illness set him free to write a series of philosophical fragments: some narratives, some single images, some parables. These “aphorisms” appeared, sometimes with a few words changed, in other writings–some of them as posthumous fragments published only after Kafka’s death in 1924. While working on K., his major book on Kafka, in the Bodleian Library, Roberto Calasso realized that the Zürau aphorisms, each written on a separate slip of very thin paper, numbered but unbound, represented something unique in Kafka’s opus–a work whose form he had created simultaneously with its content. The notebooks, freshly translated and laid out as Kafka had intended, are a distillation of Kafka at his most powerful and enigmatic. This lost jewel provides the reader with a fresh perspective on the collective work of a genius.

"In the Penal Colony" is a short story by Franz Kafka written in German in October 1914, and first published in October 1919. The story is set in an unnamed penal colony. It describes the last use of an elaborate torture and execution device that carves the sentence of the condemned prisoner on his skin in a script before letting him die, all in the course of twelve hours. As the plot unfolds, the reader learns more and more about the machine, including its origin, and original justification.

Kafka’s first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story of the young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing sexual misadventure, finds himself “packed off to America” by his parents. Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures. Although Kafka never visited America, images of its vast landscape, dangers, and opportunities inspired this saga of the “golden land.” Here is a startlingly modern, fantastic and visionary tale of America “as a place no one has yet seen, in a historical period that can’t be identified,” writes E. L. Doctorow in his new foreword. “Kafka made his novel from his own mind’s mythic elements,” Doctorow explains, “and the research data that caught his eye were bent like rays in a field of gravity.”

Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power previously unknown to English language readers.

I have only one request," Kafka wrote to his publisher Kurt Wolff in 1913. "'The Stoker, ' 'The Metamorphosis, ' and 'The Judgment' belong together, both inwardly and outwardly. There is an obviousconnection among the three, and, even more important, a secret one, for which reason I would be reluctant to forego the chance of having them published together in a book, which might be called TheSons." Seventy-five years later, Kafka's request is-granted, in a volume including these three classic stories of filial revolt as well as his own poignant "Letter to HisFather," another "son story" located between fiction and autobiography. A devastating indictment of the modern family, The Sons represents Kafka's most concentrated literary achievement as wellas the story of his own domestic tragedy. Grouped together under this new title and in newly revised translations, these texts -- the like of which Kafka had never written before and (as he claimed atthe end of his life) would never again equal -- take on fresh, compelling meaning. "From the Trade Paperback edition."

Franz Kafka's letters to his one-time muse, Milena Jesenska - an intimate window into the desires and hopes of the twentieth-century's most prophetic and important writerKafka first made the acquaintance of Milena Jesenska in 1920 when she was translating his early short prose into Czech, and their relationship quickly developed into a deep attachment. Such was his feeling for her that Kafka showed her his diaries and, in doing so, laid bare his heart and his conscience. While at times Milena's 'genius for living' gave Kafka new life, it ultimately exhausted him, and their relationship was to last little over two years. In 1924 Kafka died in a sanatorium near Vienna, and Milena died in 1944 at the hands of the Nazis, leaving these letters as a moving record of their relationship.

Animals, strange beasts, bureaucrats, businessmen, and nightmares populate this collection of stories by Franz Kafka. These matchless short works, all unpublished during Kafka’s lifetime, range from the gleeful dialogue between a cat and a mouse in “Little Fable” to the absurd humor of “Investigations of a Dog,” from the elaborate waking nightmare of “Building the Great Wall of China” to the creeping unease of “The Burrow,” where a nameless creature’s labyrinthine hiding place turns into a trap of fear and paranoia.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Franz Kafka’s imagination so far outstripped the forms and conventions of the literary tradition he inherited that he was forced to turn that tradition inside out in order to tell his splendid, mysterious tales. Scrupulously naturalistic on the surface, uncanny in their depths, these stories represent the achieved art of a modern master who had the gift of making our problematic spiritual life palpable and real.This edition of his stories includes all his available shorter fiction in a collection edited, arranged, and introduced by Gabriel Josipovici in ways that bring out the writer’s extraordinary range and intensity of vision. --randomhouse.com Children on a country road -- Unmasking a confidence trickster -- The sudden walk -- Resolutions -- Excursion into the mountains -- Bachelor's ill luck -- The tradesman -- Absent-minded window-gazing -- The way home -- Passers-by -- On the tram -- Clothes -- Rejection -- Reflections for gentlemen-jockeys -- The street window -- The wish to be a red Indian -- The trees -- Unhappiness -- The judgment -- The stoker -- The metamorphosis -- In the penal colony -- A country doctor: The new advocate -- A country doctor -- Up in the gallery -- An old manuscript -- Before the law -- Jackals and Arabs -- A visit to a mine -- The next village -- An imperial message -- The cares of a family man -- Eleven sons -- A fratricide -- A dream -- A report to an academy -- The bucket rider -- A hunger artist: First sorrow -- A little woman -- A hunger artist -- Josephine the singer, or the mouse folk -- Descriptions of a struggle -- Wedding preparations in the country -- The student -- The angel -- The village schoolmaster (The giant mole) -- Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor -- The hunter Gracchus -- The proclamation -- The bridge -- The Great Wall of China -- The knock at the manor gate -- An ancient sword -- New lamps -- My neighbor -- A crossbreed (A sport) -- A splendid beast -- The watchman -- A common confusion -- The truth about Sancho Panza -- The silence of the siren -- Prometheus -- The city coat of arms -- Poseidon -- Fellowship -- At night -- The problem of our laws -- The conscription of troops -- The test -- The vulture -- The helmsman -- The top -- Hands -- A little fable -- Isabella -- Home-coming -- A Chinese puzzle -- The departure -- Advocates -- Investigations of a dog -- The married couple -- Give it up! -- On parables -- The burrow.