Franz Kafka

Metamorphosis: Popular Penguins by Franz Kafka is a compelling collection that showcases a selection of Kafka's works which he considered significant and worthy of publication. This volume promises to take readers on a journey through Kafka’s unique literary landscape, marked by his distinct style and profound thematic concerns. The collection opens with Metamorphosis, Kafka's most celebrated work. It narrates the...

Investigations of a Dog by Franz Kafka presents a unique and imaginative journey into the mind of a canine philosopher. Through the eyes of a curious and introspective dog, Kafka dissects the intricacies of existence, perception, and the limits of understanding. The narrator, a dog deeply engrossed in the quest for knowledge, embarks on a thoughtful exploration of his world,...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics—irresistible, mini editions of short works by the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. One morning, ordinary salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach. Metamorphosis, Kafka's masterpiece of unease and black humour, is one of the twentieth century's most influential works of fiction, and is accompanied here by...

The story begins with a startling turn of events: "Somebody must have laid false information against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong." From this cryptic and unnerving outset, The Trial: Popular Penguins delves into the nightmarish and absurd world of Josef K., an ordinary bank officer who suddenly finds himself entangled in a...

The Castle is Kafka's last great, unfinished novel— the book that hangs over the whole modern era like a nightmare. The Castle tells the story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and...

The Trial is Kafka's gripping work of psychological horror. A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a...

A collection of Kafka's greatest stories, including his famous tale of alienation, now in Penguin Black Classics. This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies; The Judgement,...

The Complete Novels of one of the greatest German writers of all time, collected together in one literary masterpiece. Kafka's characters are victims of forces beyond their control, estranged and rootless citizens deceived by authoritarian power. Filled with claustrophobic description and existential profundity, Kafka has been compared to a literary Woody Allen. In The Trial, Joseph K is relentlessly hunted...

A PMC reissue of this collection of Kafka's greatest short fiction, translated by Michael Hofmann. A reissue of the Penguin Modern Classics edition, this collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; Meditation, a collection...

A window into the desires and hopes of the twentieth-century's most prophetic and important writer. You are the knife I turn inside myself Letters to Milena contains Franz Kafka's letters to his one-time muse, Milena Jesenska, providing an intimate window into the desires and hopes of the twentieth-century's most prophetic and important writer. Kafka first made the acquaintance of Milena...

The Complete Short Stories by Franz Kafka showcases the brilliance of the 20th century's greatest visionary. This collection is universally acknowledged as highlighting Kafka’s profound impact on literature and modern thought. As W. H. Auden famously stated, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man." His works encapsulate the existential challenges of contemporary life,...

The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka's 1915 novella of unexplained horror and nightmarish transformation, became a worldwide classic and remains, a century later, one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world. It is the story of travelling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. This hugely influential work inspired George...

A lyrical translation of Kafka's first novel - a menacing allegory of modern life. Karl Rossman has been banished by his parents to America, following a family scandal. There, with unquenchable optimism, he throws himself into the strange experiences that lie before him as he slowly makes his way into the interior of the great continent. Kafka's first novel (begun...

The Trial is Kafka's gripping work of psychological horror, featuring a new introduction and notes by Carolin Duttlinger. This terrifying psychological journey follows Joseph K., an ordinary man who unexpectedly finds himself accused of a crime he did not commit. The nature of this crime is never revealed to him. After his arrest, he is released but must report to...

The Trial is a haunting exploration of a man's struggle against an unfathomable and invisible authority. The novel delves into the life of Joseph K., a respectable and diligent officer at a bank, who finds himself unexpectedly arrested by a shadowy bureaucratic organisation. Without being informed of his crime, Joseph K. becomes embroiled in a protracted and surreal judicial process...

The essential translation of the author's complete, uncensored diaries, revealing the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers. Dating from 1909 to 1923, The Diaries of Franz Kafka contains a broad array of writing, including accounts of daily events, assorted reflections and observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, records of dreams, and unrevised texts...

When the young salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning transformed into a monstrous insect, his shock and incomprehension are coupled with the panic of being late for work and having to reveal his appearance to family and colleagues. Although over the following weeks he gradually becomes used to this new existence confined within the bounds of the apartment, and...

Selected by the preeminent Kafka biographer and scholar Reiner Stach and newly translated by the peerless Michael Hofmann, the seventy-four pieces gathered here in The Lost Writings have been lost to sight for decades, and two of them have never been translated into English before. Some stories are several pages long; some run about a page; a handful are only...

A Spectator Best Book of the Year "It's an extremely handsome, well-designed book, and you couldn't ask for a better introduction to Kafka…If you've never read Kafka before or if you already love him, you'll still want Harman's Selected Stories." -Michael Dirda, The Washington Post A superb new translation of Kafka's classic stories, authoritatively annotated and beautifully illustrated. Selected Stories...

A superb translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most frightening, strange and visionary short fiction. After Franz Kafka's death, in perhaps the most important of all acts of literary disobedience, his executor refused to agree to Kafka's wish that his great mass of unpublished fiction be destroyed. This fiction included not only The Castle and The Trial but...

The Castle, Kafka's last great, unfinished novel, hangs over the whole modern era like a nightmare. This edition includes a new introduction and notes by John Zilcosky. The Castle tells the story of K., an unwanted Land Surveyor who is never admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, yet cannot return home. As he faces the dualities of...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books The whole town got involved with the hunger-artist; from day to day of his starving, people's participation grew; everyone wanted to see the hunger-artist at least once a day; on the later days there were season-ticket holders who sat for days on end in front of his little cage. Reading these...

No one has captured the modern experience, its wild dreams, strange joys, its neuroses and boredom, better than Franz Kafka. His vision, with its absurdity and twisted humour, has lost none of its force or relevance today. This essential collection, translated and selected by Alexander Starritt, casts fresh light on Kafka's genius. Alongside brutal depictions of violence and justice are...

'Being asked to write about Kafka is like being asked to describe the Great Wall of China by someone who's standing just next to it. The only honest thing to do is point.' Joshua Cohen, from his preface to He: Shorter Writings of Franz Kafka. This is a Kafka emergency kit, a congregation of the brief, the minor works that...

A compelling collection of new Kafka translations in a Penguin Classics Deluxe edition. A brilliant new translation of Kafka's best-known work, published for the 125th anniversary of his birth. This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: Susan Bernofsky's acclaimed new translation, along with her Translator's Note. Introductory materials and explanatory footnotes by Mark M. Anderson. Three illustrations. Related texts by Kafka, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others. Eight critical essays by Günther Anders, Walter H. Sokel, Nina Pelikan Straus, Mark M. Anderson, Elizabeth Boa, Carolin Duttlinger,...

'One of the few great and perfect works of poetic imagination written during this century' Elias Canetti With an introduction by Adam Thirlwell One morning, Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. His family is understandably perturbed, and he finds himself an outsider in his own home. In Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Kafka explores the...

Only yesterday, Gregor Samsa was a meek salesman, browbeaten by his unappreciative employer and depended on fiercely by his ungrateful family. This morning, Gregor awakens to discover that, overnight, he has been transformed into a monstrous insect. As Gregor frantically tries to conceal his predicament, neither his family nor his unsympathetic employer accept that a terrible metamorphosis has upended his...

In 1917 and 1918, Franz Kafka wrote a set of more than 100 aphorisms, known as the Zrau aphorisms, after the Bohemian village in which he composed them. Among the most mysterious of Kafka's writings, they explore philosophical questions about truth, good and evil, and the spiritual and sensory world. This is the first annotated, bilingual volume of these extraordinary...

Franz Kafka's bizarrely comedic meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation is expressed through the story of a man who is transformed overnight into a giant beetle, now repackaged with a beautifully designed jacket by noted illustrator Malika Favre. Only yesterday, Gregor Samsa was a meek salesman, browbeaten by his unappreciative employer and depended on fiercely by his...

Franz Kafka: The Office Writings brings together, for the first time in English, Kafka’s most interesting professional writings, composed during his years as a high-ranking lawyer with the largest Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institute in the Czech Lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is commonly recognised as the greatest German prose writer of the twentieth century. It is less...

Long fascinated with the work of Franz Kafka, Peter Kuper began illustrating his stories in 1988. Initially drawn to the master's dark humour, Kuper adapted the stories over the years to plumb their deeper truths. Kuper's style deliberately evokes Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel, contemporaries of Kafka whose wordless novels captured much of the same claustrophobia and mania as Kafka's...

In 1917 and 1918, Franz Kafka wrote a set of more than 100 aphorisms, known as the Zrau aphorisms, after the Bohemian village in which he composed them. Among the most mysterious of Kafka's writings, they explore philosophical questions about truth, good and evil, and the spiritual and sensory world. This is the first annotated, bilingual volume of these extraordinary...

Awaken to the absurd and haunting world of Franz Kafka with this striking deluxe edition of The Metamorphosis. One of the most iconic works of twentieth-century literature, The Metamorphosis tells the surreal and unsettling story of Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. As Gregor struggles with his new form,...

Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It has been cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century. The story begins with a travelling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a large, monstrous insect-like creature. Samsa must learn to deal with his hideous new condition. One day, Gregor...

Someone must have been telling tales about Josef K. for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested. A successful professional man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. The mysterious court which conducts his trial is outwardly co-operative, but capable of horrific violence. Faced with this ambiguous authority,...

K. kept feeling that he had lost himself, or was further away in a strange land than anyone had ever been before. A remote village covered almost permanently in snow and dominated by a castle and its staff of dictatorial, sexually predatory bureaucrats - this is the setting for Kafka's story about a man seeking both acceptance in the village...

Franz Kafka's bizarrely comedic meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation is expressed through the story of a man who is transformed overnight into a giant beetle. Now, this classic is repackaged with a beautifully designed jacket by noted illustrator Malika Favre. Only yesterday, Gregor Samsa was a meek salesman, browbeaten by his unappreciative employer and depended on...

Like George Orwell, Franz Kafka has given his name to a world of nightmare, but in Kafka's world, it is never completely clear just what the nightmare is. The Trial, where the rules are hidden from even the highest officials, and if there is any help to be had, it will come from unexpected sources, is a chilling, blackly amusing...

On his thirtieth birthday, the bank clerk Josef K. is suddenly arrested by mysterious agents for an unspecified crime. He is told that he will be set free, but must make regular appearances at a court in the attic of a tenement building while his trial proceeds. Although he never comes to know the particulars of his case, Josef K....

Through tight dialogue and absurd settings Franz Kafka creates a maze-like prose to mimic the bureaucracy of early twentieth-century Germany, trapping his protagonist in an unlawful conviction that alters the path of his life. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library, a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold-foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or...

An essential new translation of the author's complete, uncensored diaries - revealing the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers. Dating from 1909 to 1923, Franz Kafka's Diaries contains a broad array of writing, including accounts of daily events, assorted reflections and observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, records of dreams, and unrevised texts...

Kafka's Selected Stories is presented in this Norton Critical Edition with new translations by leading Kafka scholar and translator Stanley Corngold. The edition comprises thirty stories, each accompanied by detailed annotations for enhanced understanding. "Backgrounds and Contexts" offers readers a glimpse into Kafka's creative process through extracts from his letters, diaries, and conversations, providing invaluable insight into his mind and...

From the pulpy, tentacled body of the Cthulhu to the sharpened fangs of Count Dracula, this handsome box set collates the most hair-raising characters of the horror and fantasy genres. The collection of eight tales will whisk you away to gothic towers, uncharted islands, and dusty laboratories—brought to you by some of the most celebrated authors of the 19th and...

Perhaps the most interesting writer of his generation... A strange and disconcerting genius — Edwin Muir No other voice has borne truer witness to the dark of our times — George Steiner After an embarrassing sexual misadventure with a servant girl, sixteen-year-old Karl Rossman is banished to America by his parents. Expected to redeem himself in the land of opportunity,...