The Diaries of Franz Kafka (76 page)

Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883, the son of a rich Jewish Czech merchant. After studying literature and medicine for a short time, he turned to law, which he believed was the profession that would give him the greatest amount of free time for his private life and his writing. He took his doctorate in law at Prague University, got a job with an insurance company, and later became a clerk in the semi-governmental Workers’ Insurance Office. In later years the necessity of earning his living by routine office work became an intolerable burden, and he broke away altogether, settling down in a Berlin suburb to devote himself to writing. In 1914 he became engaged, but broke it off, feeling unable to face marriage. He made one more attempt to marry, but it was discovered that he was suffering from tuberculosis and he went to a sanatorium. His unsatisfactory love affairs, his relationship with his father, a self-made man who cared nothing for his son’s literary aspirations, and his own inflexible intellectual honesty and almost psychopathic sensitivity finally broke down his health, and the ‘hunger years’ of post-1918 Berlin added the finishing touches. He died in 1924. Although he was a Czech, Kafka’s books were all written in German. Seven of them were published during his lifetime.
The Trial
first appeared after the author’s death in 1925,
The Castle
in 1926,
Amerika
in 1927, and
The Great Wall of China
in 1931.

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Max Brod was a close friend of Kafka in his youth, and wrote a well-known biography of him. Kafka left him all his papers to be destroyed, but Brod, as friend and executor, decided against it. He wrote a novel about their friendship,
The Kingdom of Love
. Max Brod died in 1968.

AMERIKA
translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, with a foreword by E. L. Doctorow

Kafka’s first and funniest novel tells the story of the young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, “packed off to America” by his parents, finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures.

THE CASTLE
a new translation by Mark Harman, based on the restored text

This haunting tale of a man known only as K. and his endless struggle against an inscrutable authority to gain admittance to a castle is often cited as Kafka’s most autobiographical work.

“Will be
the
translation of preference for some time to come.”

—J. M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books

THE COMPLETE STORIES
edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, with a foreword by John Updike

All of Kafka’s stories are collected here in one comprehensive volume; with the exception of the three novels, the whole of his narrative work is included.

“The Complete Stories
is an encyclopedia of our insecurities and our brave attempts to oppose them.”

—Anatole Broyard

THE DIARIES OF FRANZ KAFKA
edited by Max Brod

For the first time in this country, the complete diaries of Franz Kafka are available in one volume. Covering the period from 1910 to 1923, the year before Kafka’s death, they reveal the essential Kafka behind the enigmatic artist.

“It is likely that these journals will be regarded as one of [Kafka’s] major literary works; in these pages, he reveals what he customarily hid from the world.”

—New Yorker

LETTERS TO FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND EDITORS
translated by Richard and Clara Winston

Kafka’s letters to the people closest to him form a deeply revealing—and unexpectedly charming—portrait of one of this century’s greatest writers.

“Affords us an inside view of a writer who, perhaps more than any other novelist or poet in our century, stands at the center of our culture.”

—Robert Alter,
New York Times Book Review

THE METAMORPHOSIS, IN THE PENAL COLONY,
AND OTHER STORIES
translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
,
with a foreword by Anne Rice

This powerful collection brings together all the stories Franz Kafka published during his lifetime, including “The Judgment,” “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” “A Country Doctor,” and “A Hunger Artist.”

PARABLES AND PARADOXES
edited by Nahum N. Glatzer

In this volume of collected pieces, Kafka re-examines and boldly rewrites some basic mythological tales of Ancient Israel, Hellas, the Far East, and the West, making them creations of his own imagination. A bilingual edition, in German and English.

THE SONS
translations revised and updated by Arthur Wensinger
,
with an introduction by Mark Anderson

Franz Kafka’s three classic stories of filial revolt—“The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker”—grouped together with his own poignant “Letter to His Father,” take on fresh, compelling meaning.

“Kafka is the author who comes nearest to bearing the same kind of relationship to our age as Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe bore to theirs.”

—W. H. Auden

THE TRIAL
a new translation by Breon Mitchell, based on the restored text

The terrifying story of Joseph K., his arrest and trial, is one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

“Mitchell’s translation is an accomplishment of the highest order —one that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century.”

—Walter Abish, author of
How German Is It