Franz Kafka nacio en Praga el 3 de julio de 1883 en el seno de una familia judia. Sus padres eran Hermann Kafka (1852-1931) y Julie Lowy (1856-1934). Kafka a los 5 anos (1888). Su padre habia nacido en Wossek, aldea de poblacion mayoritariamente judia checo-hablante, cerca de Pisek, en la region de Bohemia del Sur. Originario de una familia rural judia de carniceros, con frecuentes problemas economicos, tras trabajar como representante de comercio, en 1881 se establecio por su cuenta en Praga, donde regenteo un negocio textil en la Zeltnergasse (Celetna ulice), que contaba con 15 empleados...

This authorized edition of DIE VERWANDLUNG by Franz Kafka was originally published by Schocken Books Inc. in Volume I of the Gesammelte Wenke "Erzahlungen und Kleine Prosa," Berlin, 1935; New York, 1946. It appears here with the publisher's permission. This edition is in German with editorial matter in English.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Prague hosted a cosmopolitan culture whose literary scene abounded in experimental writers. Two of the city's natives are featured in this dual-language volume: Franz Kafka, whose fiction is synonymous with the anguish of modern life; and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose stories unfold in the same transcendent lyricism as his verse.
Twelve of Kafka's stories from the compilation Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor) appear here, along with two tales from Ein Hungerkunstler (A Hunger Artist). Rilke's stories include -Die Weise von...

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

The story of the mysterious indictment, trial, and reckoning forced upon Joseph K. in Franz Kafka's The Trial is one of the twentieth century's master parables, reflecting the central spiritual crises of modern life. Kafka's method-one that has influenced, in some way, almost every writer of substance who followed him-was to render the absurd and the terrifying convincing by a scrupulous, hyperreal matter-of-factness of tone and treatment. He thereby imparted to his work a level of seriousness normally associated with civilization's most cherished...

(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...

(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...

Translated by PEN translation award-winner Joachim Neugroschel, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories has garnered critical acclaim and 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...

This series provides comprehensive reading and study guides for some of the world's most important literary masterpieces.

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 obvious connection 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 The Sons.-

This collection brings together the stories that Kafka allowed to be published during his lifetime. To Max Brod, his literary executor, he wrote: "Of all my writings the only books that can stand are these."