One of the most terrifying stories ever written, "The Metamorphosis" introduces us to Gregor Samsa, the young man who wakes up to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect. Along with the horrifying machine of "In the Penal Colony," the merciless condemnation of son by father of "The Judgment," and the starvation of "A Hunger Artist," Kafka created some of the most haunting, timeless, and enduring images of the nightmare world of everyday life.
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....Should they disappear altogether that would please me best. Only, since they do exist, I do not wish to hinder anyone who may want to, from keeping them."
Editorial Reviews
“Kafka’s survey of the insectile situation of young Jews in inner Bohemia can hardly be improved upon: ‘With their posterior legs they were still glued to their father’s Jewishness and with their wavering anterior legs they found no new ground.’ There is a sense in which Kafka’s Jewish question (‘What have I in common with Jews?’) has become everybody’s question, Jewish alienation the template for all our doubts. What is Muslimness? What is femaleness? What is Polishness? These days we all find our anterior legs flailing before us. We’re all insects, all Ungeziefer, now.” —Zadie Smith
“Kafka engaged in no technical experiments whatsoever; without in any way changing the German language, he stripped it of its involved constructions until it became clear and simple, like everyday speech purified of slang and negligence. The common experience of Kafka’s readers is one of general and vague fascination, even in stories they fail to understand, a precise recollection of strange and seemingly absurd images and descriptions—until one day the hidden meaning reveals itself to them with the sudden evidence of a truth simple and incontestable.” —Hannah Arendt
"In some ways, there has never been a better time for Kafka's work than now. The last fifty years paved the way for [his] eerie beauty and seeming madness....'The Metamorphosis,' 'In the Penal Colony,' and 'A Hunger Artists' are among the finest horror stories ever written. Seventy years after his death, art has finally begun to catch up with him." --From the Foreword by Anne Rice
With a New Foreword by Anne Rice
Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
About the Author
A native of Prague, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) worked for an insurance company by day and wrote his tales of alienation and social anxiety in private. Like the majority of the author's work, The Trial was published after his untimely death from tuberculosis.
![When this classic collection of stories first appeared—in 1962, on the author’s thirtieth birthday—Arthur Mizener wrote in The New York Times Book Review: “Updike is a romantic [and] like all American romantics, that is, he has an irresistible impulse to go in memory home again in order to find himself. . . . The precise recollection of his own family-love, parental and marital, is vital to him; it is the matter in which the saving truth is incarnate. . . . Pigeon Feathers is not just a book of very brilliant short stories; it is a demonstration of how the most gifted writer of his generation is coming to maturity; it shows us that Mr. Updike’s fine verbal talent is no longer pirouetting, however gracefully, out of a simple delight in motion, but is beginning to serve his deepest insight.”](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-ezptpblrxu/images/stencil/500x659/products/1019/1658/PigeonsStories__64020.1660081010.jpg?c=2 "When this classic collection of stories first appeared—in 1962, on the author’s thirtieth birthday—Arthur Mizener wrote in The New York Times Book Review: “Updike is a romantic [and] like all American romantics, that is, he has an irresistible impulse to go in memory home again in order to find himself. . . . The precise recollection of his own family-love, parental and marital, is vital to him; it is the matter in which the saving truth is incarnate. . . . Pigeon Feathers is not just a book of very brilliant short stories; it is a demonstration of how the most gifted writer of his generation is coming to maturity; it shows us that Mr. Updike’s fine verbal talent is no longer pirouetting, however gracefully, out of a simple delight in motion, but is beginning to serve his deepest insight.”")
