Probably most readable, rhythmic and rounded among these tales, so much so that I forced my brother to listen to me reading it aloud to him, is The Great Wall of China, which contains the immortal parable of the messenger.Kafka's tales are oblique, frequently, I think, resisting reading in terms of established philosophical or ideological positions. Their psychological resonance is immense, even when it's difficult to pin a definitive meaning to the action, to divine the motivations of the chara...

The idea that there exists such thing as a “must read” book is one of the great fallacies diluting literature. To judge a reader unfavourably because a certain book is not on his or her shelf, rather than to praise and learn from the idiosyncratic choices to be found there instead, is to wish for a literature of bland homogeneity. To label a book “must read” is to condemn it to being misunderstood. And when that book is by the strange, reclusive, haunted black-humourist Franz Kafka, and is given...

The Old Man in the Woods Or The Monkeys by fire We monkeys have sat by this ever-burning fire for generations because we are afraid to go outside the perimeter of its light into the dark. Although we have tried to look beyond into the darkness everyday hoping to find something; yet all of us are afraid to step out. And this fear is not baseless, for whoever has entered the darkness has never returned. Thus this fire has a very central role to play in our lives. It has been there for as l

Kafka placed his own stories in a specific canon, included in the previous book I reviewed, called “The Metamorphosis and Other Stories.” I agree with Kafka. Those stories stand out among the rest. However, reading all of his shorts gave me no less pleasure. I liked his shorter stories most, as they packed meaning and depth into a small speck, like the small matter scientists say blew up into the Universe. I love the way Kafka describes settings. I love the way he makes me feel. Two stories I co...

I think it's a little mistake to judge Kafka considering only "The Metamorphosis". There's a whole different view on things in some of his stories. You're not going to find a nice, warm, fuzzy, Care Bear kind of book (that line made sense in my mind). But some of his stories do show another side of him. I personally like the psychological twisted, complicated, claustrophobic and absurd ones with a weird sense of humor (yes, he can be funny) and infinite interpretations. But that's just me.I like...

Sämtliche Erzählungen = The Complete Short Stories = Collected Stories, Franz Kafka This volume contains all of Kafka's shorter fiction, from fragments, parables and sketches to longer tales. Together they reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought. Some are well-known, others are mere jottings, observations of daily life, given artistic form through Kafka's unique perception of the world.تاریخ نخستین خوانش این نسخه: بیست و سوم ژوئن سال 2...

There is a book written by Max Brod in 1928, four years after Kafka's death, titled Zauberreich Der Liebe (The Kingdom of Love /The Magic Realm of Love) its main character inspired after Kafka. I would be interested in reading it, if I could find the English translation somewhere. This book was rejected by Walter Benjamin with arguments that make no sense, in a letter to Gerhard Scholem, Paris, June 12, 1938. I do not know by what logic Walter Benjamin considers himself a connoisseur of Kafka's

I first bought this in 2009, in an edition where Vintage had removed the full stops from the text in error, or to lure me into some Kakfaesque trap. Thanks, Vintage! I complained and received a freebie of Bulgakov’s The Heart of a Dog instead. I parked the stories for a long time, until this moment in time, when I revisited the most terrifying story in the universe, ‘The Metamorphosis’, the most horrific and significant story in the universe ‘Inside the Penal Colony’, the breathtaking debut ‘Des...

Albert Camus once said that "the whole of Kafka's art consists in compelling the reader to re-read him." Since the interpretations of Kafka are many and the search for the meaning of his stories seemingly endless, the reader will return to the story itself in the hope of finding guidance from within. Thus, a second reading will — hopefully — become a commentary on the first, and subsequent readings will — again hopefully — shed light on the preceding ones. Each story I read trapped me in an endl...

In his introduction here John Updike mentions the beauty of the original German. I wonder if that isn’t why the stories as I read them here in English are so often slogs. “Metamorphosis” was a great bore. Alas…

[9th book of 2021. Artist for this review will be Czech painter František Muzika.]“…Like having an extremely volatile friend,” I concluded. I was glad to finish my tirade as the woman I was talking to had proceeded, about half way through the speech, to slink beneath the table and try and work one of my socks off. Despite being alarmed by this I waited to see what would come of it; my sock was removed. She began work on the other when I brought my foot away from her and we met eyes: hers were wi...

The recent so-called scandalous revelations about Kafka's personal library (as if -- turns out he read a slightly edgy quarterly of arts & literature) prompt me to say something about his work. For my Goodreads list, I suppose it must be this book, an inevitable choice but nonetheless indispensable (I should add, too, that I can't really specify when I read the COLLECTED STORIES; I began doing so in the 1960's & never stopped). To read Kafka is to be carried away by the imagination of the centur...

I can't believe I haven't rated this one yet. This is where you go to find Kafka, even more so than his unfinished novels. Though the Trial is magnificent, the short stories are where his genius is most evident. Depths and depths to plumb here. Leagues beyond most other writers.

“At the very corner dividing the two streets Wese paused, only his walking stick came around into the other street to support him. A sudden whim. The night sky invited him, with its dark blue and its gold. Unknowing, he gazed up at it, unknowing he lifted his hat and stroked his hair; nothing up there drew together in a pattern to interpret the immediate future for him; everything stayed in its senseless, inscrutable place. In itself it was a highly reasonable action that Wese should walk on, bu...

3.75 starsI found reading this book time-consuming, tedious and tiresome due to its stories' unpredictable lengths as well as many of his lengthy narrations in which I wondered if he has applied a literary technique called 'stream of consciousness'. The technique, I think, is fine with appropriate indented paragraphs but it was sheer challenging and discouraging beyond words at the same time in terms of readability and encouragement. For example, "Investigations of a Dog" covering 38 pages has 2...

Every story is different, but each one takes you to a different world, or an alternative view of one we are in (and perhaps wish we weren't). Some are funny, some sad and many are both. Some are so short they are more like prose poems. Great for dipping into and getting a taste of Kafka before (and during and after) tackling his larger works.See my Kafka-related bookshelf for other works by and about Kafka (http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...).

“Around me things sink away like fallen snow, whereas for other people even a little liqueur glass stands on the table steady as a statue.” 4.5 stars.There are stories in this collection (and these were by far my favorite kind) that clutch and fumble and scrabble across the surface of your mind, entities so eerily misshapen and askew that you don’t want to let them in. Grimacing and winking, they slither in anyway. Before you know it, everything you thought solid and real begins to fall away

Buy a good collection of Kafka's stories and put it in the bathroom. Really.If you've been led to believe that Kafka wrote drab stories about alienation and angst (and that The Metamorphosis is a tradgedy), then take a magic marker, cross out the name on the spine, and pretend it's a weird book by Dave Sedaris or something. Kafka's stories are smart, often funny, quick to read, and as modern and relevant as ever.In the bathroom you'll probably bypass the larger works (including The Metamorphosis...