In the days when hunger could be cultivated and practiced as an art form, the individuals who practiced it were often put on show for all to see. One man who was so devout in his pursuit of hunger pushed against the boundaries set by the circus that housed him and strived to go longer than forty days without food. As interest in his art began to fade, he pushed the boundaries even further. In this short story about one man’s plight to prove his worth, Franz Kafka illustrates the themes of self-hatred, dedication, and spiritual yearning.

A Brilliant new translation of the great writer’s least Kafkaesque novel, based on a German-language text that was produced by a team of international scholars and that is more faithful to Kafka’s original manuscript than anything we have had before.
With the same expert balance of precision and nuance that marked his translation of Kafka’s The Castle, the award-winning translator Mark Harman now restores the humor and particularity of language to Amerika. Here is the story of seventeen-year-old Karl Rossman, who, following a scandal involving a housemaid, is banished by his parents to America. With unquenchable optimism and in the company of two comic-sinister companions, he throws himself into misadventure after misadventure, eventually landing in Oklahoma, where a career in the theater beckons.
Like much of Kafka’s work, Amerika remained unfinished at the time of his death. Though we can never know how Kafka planned to end the novel, Mark Harman’s superb translation allows us to appreciate as closely as possible, what Kafka did commit to the page.

Kafkas unvollendetes Meisterwerk in ungekürzter Lesung. Vor den Gefahren des Lebens da draußen flüchten wir uns in unser eigenes Reich. Wir schaffen uns einen Bau, den wir genau kennen, ein System, das Kontrolle verspricht. Zumindest für einen Moment. Bis wir die Kontrolle verlieren. “Die Welt ist mannigfaltig und an schlimmen Überraschungen fehlt es niemals.”
Die kurz vor Kafkas Tod entstandene Erzählung spricht mit unvergleichlicher Energie von Perfektionismus, Angst und dem Streben nach Sicherheit. “Am Ende macht man schon wieder neue Gänge, man, alter Maulwurf.” (Franz Kafka an Milena Jesenká)

Ce matin-là, lorsque Gregor Samsa veut se lever pour aller travailler, quelque chose l’en empêche. C’est en réalité son propre corps qui s’est métamorphosé en insecte pendant la nuit. Désormais, il n’inspire que le dégoût, et n’a plus aucune autonomie. Personne ne croit à sa capacité à ressentir des émotions malgré son aspect monstrueux. La métamorphose s’opère également dans le comportement de ceux qu’il aime et qui ne veulent plus de lui, dans son rapport à l’espace, à lui-même et à l’existence. Publiée en 1915, La Métamorphose est la nouvelle la plus connue de Franz Kafka.

On his deathbed, Franz Kafka asked that all his unpublished manuscripts be burned. Fortunately, his request was ignored, allowing such works as The Trial to earn recognition among the literary masterpieces of the 20th century. This brilliant new translation of The Castle captures comedic elements and visual imagery that earlier interpretations missed. A traveler known only as K. is promised a job as Land-Surveyor by officials of the Castle. But when K. arrives in town to claim his position, he learns that owing to a clerical error, his services aren’t needed after all. Seeking an explanation, K. endures increasingly frustrating setbacks as he strives in vain to simply make contact with someone-anyone-from the Castle. Saturated with absurdist humor, this haunting novel has fascinated and puzzled readers throughout the world. Some critics praise it as the century’s great religious parable, while others interpret it as indisputably antireligious. Critically acclaimed narrator George Guidall sheds light on this dreamlike tale, illuminating the limitless nuances of Kafka’s writing.

This edition of Kafka’s terrifying and comic masterpiece is the product of an international team of experts who used Kafka’s original text and notes to render this story as close to the author’s vision as possible. Kafka’s final novel tells the haunting tale of a man’s relentless struggle with authority in order to gain entrance to the Castle.

The story of K–the unwanted land surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle and yet cannot go home–seems to depict, like a dream from the deepest recesses of consciousness, an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. A perpetual human condition lies at the heart of this labyrinthine world: dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, reason and nonsense, harmony and disintegration. An unfinished novel that feels strangely complete, The Castle uses absurd fantasy to reveal a profound truth.

Though Kafka seemed to think this work a failure, it has been recognized by critics as one of the greatest novels of its century.

In the bizarre world of Franz Kafka, salesmen turn into giant bugs, apes give lectures at college academies, and nightmares probe the mysteries of modern humanity’s unhappiness. More than any other modern writer in world literature, Kafka captures the loneliness and misery that fill the lives of 20th-century humanity. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories reveals the author’s extraordinary talent in a variety of forms-prose poems, short stories, sketches, allegories, and novelettes-and showcases the straight-faced humor, startling psychological insight, and haunting imagination for which he is revered as a modern master. In this brilliant new translation, prize-winning translator Joachim Neugroschel preserves the delicate balance, rich timbre, and wondrous language of Kafka’s original works. In addition to The Metamorphosis, this collection includes Early Stories, Contemplation, The Judgement, The Stoker, In the Penal Colony, and A Country Doctor.

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.”

With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young traveling salesman who, transformed overnight into a giant, beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. Rather than being surprised at the transformation, the members of his family despise it as an impending burden upon themselves.

A harrowing–though absurdly comic–meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W. H. Auden wrote, “Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.”

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Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, first published in 1915, has been cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the twentieth century. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect. This extraordinary tale of imagination was written by Kafka against the backdrop of increasing turmoil in central Europe and remains not just an affecting tale but a disturbing allegory.

The most famous of Franz Kafka’s works, The Metamorphosis describes a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, who wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. This change in his condition does not surprise or shock his family, rather, they look on it as an impending burden. Subtexts include how society’s perceptions of differences, the loneliness of isolation, and the absurdity of the human condition. The Metamorphosis is often cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world.

If Max Brod had obeyed Franz Kafka’s dying request, Kafka’s unpublished manuscripts would have been burned, unread. Fortunately, Brod ignored his friend’s wishes and published The Trial, which became the author’s most famous work. Now Kafka’s enigmatic novel regains its humor and stylistic elegance in a new translation based on the restored original manuscript. Thirty-year-old Josef K., a financial officer in a European city bank, is suddenly arrested. He is subjected to hearings, questioning, and visits from officials. Defending his innocence against charges that are never explained to him, he watches his life dissolve into absurdity. Whether read as an existential tale or a parable, this haunting story stands out as one of the great novels of our time. Breon Mitchell, a professor of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, has received national awards for his literary translations. The renewed energy and power of this classic work are complemented by veteran narrator George Guidall’s superb performance. Publisher’s note, translator’s preface, and fragments are included on the final tape.

Josef K. is an employee at a bank, an Everyman without any particular qualities or ambitions. His inconsequence makes doubly strange his “arrest” by an officer of the court, made with no formal charges or explanation. Disoriented and consumed with guilt for a “crime” he does not understand, Josef K. must justify his life to a “court” with which he cannot communicate. The defendant can only ask questions, but receives no answers to clarify the surreal world in which he is compelled to wander.

Through the court’s relentless bureaucratic proceedings and absurd juxtapositions of different hypotheses of cause and effect, the whole rational structure of the world is undermined. The trial of Josef K. becomes a chilling existential metaphor for life itself, where every sentence is a sentence of death.

First published in 1925, The Trial tells the story of a man arrested for an unknown crime by a remote, inaccessible authority and his struggle for control over the increasing absurdity of his life. One of Franz Kafka’s best-known works, The Trial has been variously interpreted as an examination of political power, a satirical depiction of bureaucracy, and a pessimistic religious parable. Left unfinished at the time of Kafka’s 1924 death, The Trial is nevertheless a trenchant depiction of the seemingly incomprehensible nature of existence and a fascinating exploration of the universal issues of justice, power, freedom, and isolation.