The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony, and Other Stories - by Franz Kafka (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A classic translation of Kafka's best-known, and most obscure, short fiction--with a new foreword from celebrated writer Ling Ma.

Widely recognized as one of the preeminent English-language anthologies of Kafka's stories, this critically acclaimed collection assembles the great short works of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers. With masterful attentiveness to the intricacies of Kafka's dialect of Prague German, this is an essential selection of forty-four stories, including such timeless works of fiction as "The Metamorphosis," "In the Penal Colony," and "The Judgment." Brought into the present by a foreword from Ling Ma, Kafka's work has never been more relevant to contemporary literature--nor has Kafka himself ever been a keener observer of the human condition, with his singular apprehension of power, the absurd, and the enigma and alienation at the center of modern living.

Review Quotes

"In Neugroschel's version we see more of Kafka's meaning, his unexpected comedy....In this version, we have for the first time the sense of understanding Kafka's complexity and where it might lead us." --Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune

"Joachim Neugroschel has provided something that was badly needed--an accurate translation of Kafka's stories into English. Kafka is difficult to translate, and the version we all know--by Edwin and Willa Muir--is full of mistakes. Neugroschel's translation is much closer to Kafka's German." --Ronald Hayman, author of K: A Biography of Kafka and Proust

"In Kafka, I have found a portion of my own experience of the world, of myself, and of my way of being in the world." --Václav Havel

About the Author

Joachim Neugroschel (1938-2011) was the translator of over two hundred books, including works by Marcel Proust, Elias Canetti, and Thomas Mann. Over the course of his career, he received many awards, including the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Ling Ma is author of the novel Severance and the story collection Bliss Montage. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Windham Campbell Prize in Literature, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta, and VQR. She lives in Chicago.