The Complete Stories

By Franz Kafka

The complete stories of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial.

“An important book, valuable in itself and absolutely fascinating. The stories are dreamlike, allegorical, symbolic, parabolic, grotesque, ritualistic, nasty, lucent, extremely personal, ghoulishly detached, exquisitely comic, numinous, and prophetic.” —The New York Times

The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death. With the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka’s narrative work is included in this volume.  

“[Kafka] spoke for millions in their new unease; a century after his birth, he seems the last holy writer, and the supreme fabulist of modern man’s cosmic predicament.” —from the Foreword by John Updike

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9780307829450

Franz Kafka

Born in Prague in 1883, the son of a self-made Jewish merchant, Franz Kafka trained as a lawyer and worked in insurance. He published little during his lifetime and lived his life in relative obscurity. He was forced to retire from work in 1917 after being diagnosed with tuberculosis, a debilitating illness which dogged his final years. When he died in 1924 he bequeathed the – mainly unfinished – manuscripts of his novels, stories, letters and diaries to his friend the writer Max Brod with the strict instruction that they should be destroyed. Brod ignored Kafka’s wishes and organised the publication of his work, including The Trial, which appeared in 1925. It is through Brod’s efforts that Kafka is now regarded as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century.

Reviews for The Complete Stories

[jeff5maynes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As with any set of collected stories, the quality in this volume is uneven, but in this collection, the highs are very high indeed. The classic stories, "The Judgment, "The Metamorphosis," "In the Penal Colony," "A Report to the Academy" and "The Hunger Artist" are all highlights. Each is a powerful combination of Kafka's riveting style and his insight into character.It is this insight which also makes so many of the other stories in this volume worth your time. Kafka is able, with great skill, to enter into the minds of others, whether they be of people (the unfinished but fascinating "Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor"), humans losing humanity ("The Metamorphosis") or other creatures ("The Burrow"). Even the many short stories of only a page or two work so well because they give you interesting descriptions of characters or scenes that prime the creative pump, so to speak.Many of these shorter stories are probably best read in short bursts, or one at a time. I read through the entire collection, and so many of these stories blended together as I moved from one to the other, and this was not, I think in retrospect, the best way to approach them.As noted at the outset, though, the quality is uneven. Some of the unpublished works are unfinished, and are of varying quality. While there might be much in "Description of a Struggle" or "Wedding Preparations in the Country" for a Kafka scholar, I am neither, and I found both the prose and story in these entries to be a struggle without the same reward. These stories are probably best approached with a critical eye towards Kafka's development as a writer and storyteller.

[fuzzy_patters · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was very excited to read this collection because I loved The Trial when I read it. Unfortunately, I found the quality of writing in this collection to be very inconsistent. Kafka did not want most of these published, and it is clear why. Some of the stories are overly discursive and painful to read. Others are so short and to the point that the point became banal. Yet, I cannot exactly say that I didn't enjoy the collection, either. Despite being included with some less enjoyable works, many of the stories in this collection are brilliant. They place the reader in a world where life is absurd and we are all subject to happenstance. They are at times terrifying and always thought provoking. These stories are Kafka at his best. For those who pick up this book, reading the whole thing is certainly worthwhile, I would suggest reading the following if you do not have time to read the whole thing."Before the Law""The Imperial Message""The Metamorphosis""The Penal Colony""A Country Doctor""A Hunger Artist""Jackals and Arabs""A Little Fable"

[engpunk77 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My favorites are "Metamorphosis", "The Penal Colony", and "The Hunger Artist."

[rolandallnach · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As writers go, Franz Kafka may not be the most accessible, but his works are always of interest. His uncanny ability to draw readers to his stories with such immediacy, often a sentence or less, is perhaps one of the greater claims to his literary talent. It is unfortunate he did not live longer, so that more of his work could reach completion, or so that he could have put to paper stories we can only imagine. As a writer myself, reading Kafka is like a discertation in character development and narrative immersion. And while I may be inclined to agree in part with some other reviewers that Kafka's work can be hard to follow at times, it is the quality of his prose alone that can entertain. He is a master of 'the waking dream', that style of narrative that thrusts a reader into realities that may or may not be entirely 'real'. It is true that many of his stories are quite short, but it is not to be forgotten that even with such brevity he often manages to develop character, setting, and some type of impetus to propel the narrative. Not an easy task by any means, and perhaps what has helped contribute to his work enduring with such high regard. For those interested in unusual stories, and for those who simply love to absorb the artwork of masterful prose, Kafka is not to be missed, and this volume offers an abundance of his material, including his most popular stories.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Review of The Metamorphosis:What a freaking sad, sad story (or novella, if you will). Even though I read this once in high school and twice in college I wanted to refresh my memory about the details. From my previous readings I remember Gregor woke up one morning to find he had transformed into a bug. Instead of being concerned about the multiple legs, hard shell and the fact he couldn't turn himself over, Gregor was more upset about sleeping late, missing the train and being late to work as a traveling salesman. This was a key point in the story. I also remember his parents and sister not being all that supportive of his transformation. This also was a huge point in the story. His family was repulsed by his appearance and refused to consider him part of the family. Their neglect of him gets worse and worse until dirty and broken, he succumbs to starvation and the injuries sustained when his father threw an apple at him. What I didn't remember was the nitty-gritty psychology of it all. Gregor's resentment about being the bread winner for the family, how underneath it all he felt like a bug even before the metamorphosis, and ultimately his family's complete exclusion of Gregor as an insect. The other detail I had completely forgotten was how freeing Gregor's death was to the family. They moved on without a single regret.

[jackkane_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The more famous stories (Metamorphosis and The Penal Colony, for example) are good; but most of the stuff in the book is unreadable drivel. Many 'stories' are diary-entry type snippets or parables that in no way constitute complete writing and should never have been published, except in an academic context. Other stories are vapid walls of text, which Kafka correctly desired would remain unpublished.I'm tempted to say that Kafka is a unique writer, in the sense that what others have made of his work is more substantial and interesting than the work itself.

[edecklund · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A little Kafka goes a long way. I put this book down, actually returned it to the library, without finishing it. In addition to his "classics" there are many short stories, almost notes, some only a page long. This edition has a good introduction and a chronology as well as the requisite bibliography. It's a book I'd like to have on my bookshelf for when I feel the need for a "Kafka moment."

[dw0rd_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A little Kafka goes a long way. I put this book down, actually returned it to the library, without finishing it. In addition to his "classics" there are many short stories, almost notes, some only a page long. This edition has a good introduction and a chronology as well as the requisite bibliography. It's a book I'd like to have on my bookshelf for when I feel the need for a "Kafka moment."

[hmmm_tea · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderfully surreal, you never know what's around the page. Highlights include the Description of a Struggle, The Metamorphosis, A Report to an Academy and Excursion into the Mountains.

[elenchus_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I consider the central fact of Kafka's stories to be his effort to illustrate something familiar (at least to him) through unfamiliar scenarios. That these scenarios create an effect of alienation, a sense of the absurd, or perhaps horror is significant but not the main thing. (I think this description applies to Expressionism, generally.) And these unfamiliar scenes are in fact rooted in the familiar: certainly there is the impression of another era (customs, business, automation) moving into a recognisably modern society. And generally the tales do not seem specific to Europe or even the German-speaking cultures, but broadly applicable to 20c civilisation. Again, the unfamiliar seems a way of drawing the reader's attention, but is not itself the point.I've heard interpretations of stories such as "Die Verwandlung", and the theories seem clever and insightful at first: that it's autobiographical, say, Kafka feeling an alien or vermin for wanting to be a writer, in a family rejecting that role. But while there's something to that idea, it's soon clear it falls quite short. There's a moment in "Die Verwandlung", when the story doesn't end after the confrontation with his family, rather Gregor is left alone in his room and his family attempts to move on. At that point, it's clear there are too many contradictions, too many details which don't fit the first reading at all. And so it goes with the other stories: a moment or scene stitching together two very different tales, though featuring the same setting and characters. "Der Heizer" (originally the opening chapter of Amerika) in which the character unaccountably meets his Senator uncle amid an onboard trial between two steamship employees; "Das Urteil" in which a well-meaning young man's behaviour is revealed to be less than benevolent, though again it's not quite clear why. Always a twist that is unexpected, evidently meaningful, but ultimately elusive. Example of how Kafka confounds the expectations set up by the oddity of his establishing scenario: "In der Strafkolonie", when the executioner (der Offizier) fails to persuade the visitor of the merits of the torture device, and so ... straps himself to it, as though taking desperate measures to win the argument. If horror or weirdness were the point, that would be the climax and indeed the point, but here the key does not appear to be related to the conflict between characters, but occurs later. The tension in the story points to the protective stance adopted by the visitor toward the executioner, and his distancing from a subordinate soldier and the executioner's prisoner. Not the narrative arc expected given the opposition between the principal characters, nor that hinted at by the action, either. Clearly, Kafka is getting at something, but what?And that's just it. When I attempt to "figure out" a Kafka story, understand the strange predicament at its core, for the most part I fail. Interestingly, this failure is not disappointing, and in fact I've come to see the result as a primary source of what draws me to Kafka's work. For I'm left with the abiding strangeness, coupled with the conviction it's not done for its own sake, and though I'm not able to puzzle out the meaning, still I'm convinced there is something more than an effect underlying the story. I may never figure out the story, but I don't lose the pleasure of reading it. This reading experience isn't found anywhere else.//Read in 2011 primarily in effort to keep up my German. Kafka's prose is straightforward in vocabulary, but not as simple as I once thought. He relies comfortably on the convoluted sentence structure and nested dependent clauses characteristic of German. The language fits the stories as much as does the narrative itself.

[jkorta_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Kafka is one of the writers that got me reading as a teenager in the first place. Eerily familiar, hilariously sad, Kafka's uncanny stories will have you unsure whether you should laugh or cry. For lovers of Murakami's short stories, Kafka, an obvious inspiration for Murakami, will be a treasure trove of the absurd and the familiar, wrapped up in laconic prose. (And vice-versa: if you like Kafka, you'll certainly enjoy the perhaps more approachable Murakami)And, need I say it? These stories aren't to be so much "understood" (as reviewers seem to fear) as experienced. You cannot dominate these stories intellectually. They will slip and slide through the wet fingers of your animal mind! So drop your existential philosophy primer and just let Kafka crawl over you like a cockroach!

[morgannakerrie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I stole this book from an ex boyfriend. It's an interesting read, to say the least. It's one of those books that I should read more often, and talk to others about reading so they think I am smarter than I really am.

[a1abwriter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What can I say its Kafka. The man has the ability to weave a tale of truly extraordinary circumstances and make it seem as if they were not extraordinary at all; Stories of waking up an insect, a horrible machine that tattoos your crime on your body till your death, and graveyard ghosts. all just normal and everyday even. there in lies just a fraction of the art that is kafka.The only thing I was upset about is that this set did not have "The trial" and "America" in it.

[saraprindiville · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Slightly disturbing, somewhat confusing- really needs to be read more than once to be completely understood. It reminds me (at least the shorter stories do) of Confusian koans. I want to read more of his works, but probably not for quite a while. It is evident that he really means more than he says.

[jpsnow · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony" as part of my Great Books list. Weird stuff. Given that a lot of people agree that these are great books, I clearly need to explore some commentary and other existentialist works to get it.

[big_bang_gorilla · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a nice collection to own, as it gathers all of Kafka's narrative fiction except for his three novels in one book, which is important since when Kafka was rediscovered in the sixties, these tended to be reissued in a haphazard manner with a great deal of duplication between volumes. The book is arranged with longer stories (several of which I would term novellas) first and short shorts at the end. A few of the stories read like fragments and some of the longer ones do go on a bit with very little payoff in terms of insight into the human condition, let alone traditional metrics such as plot and characterization, but the many classic favorites make this a relatively enjoyable investment of time. The physical quality of the paperback could be better; mine is falling apart.

[stravinsky-544320 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

ramble on.

created stuff that creator has no intention of making public being made public, that's hard to judge.

I understood the implications of 'kafkaesque' before reading but now no longer do.

[bayardus-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the worlds that Kafka creates, cause and effect tend to have been tossed out the window. Actions and reactions don’t link together as neatly as we think they should, and when a connection does become apparent it’s often only in retrospect. In many of Kafka’s works the rules aren’t clear, and often are made even more opaque by the end of the story. By furthermore keeping references to the real world to a minimum in his work, Kafka severs our tether to reality and sets us adrift in what is sometimes a dreamlike, sometimes a nightmarish reality that nevertheless casts a dark reflection of our modern world. It’s little wonder that Kafka was so influential to the authors that followed him, and that he continues to be heavily influential today: as the world gets more complex, the bureaucracies of life become more ubiquitous, and outsider status remains just as prevalent as ever, Kafka’s stories resonate all the more.

So bottom line, Kafka is worth reading, but stepping away from that broad overview of his work and influence and looking at his specific works, the question of “what Kafka should I read” is a harder one. There’s nary a story he wrote that doesn’t evoke his signature feeling of disorientation, but that’s not to say that all of them are very good. After having read his complete collected stories, I’ve concluded that much of what Kafka wrote that was unpublished during his lifetime went unpublished for good reason, as some of it is quite bad. Description of a Struggle is nearly incomprehensible, Wedding Preparations in the Country is so fragmented that it’s rendered meaningless, The Burrow just keeps going and going long after you’ve gotten the point. There are some gems in there- I quite enjoyed Poseidon- but in general Kafka’s unpublished works are a big step down from what he published. In terms of what he had published, much of what Kafka wrote is so short that it lacks the impact found in his longer works. You’re following Kafka down the rabbit hole, after all, and if the journey stops after it’s barely begun it undercuts the point. Again, some of his shorter works are excellent (Before the Law and An Imperial Message come to mind, the latter clearly showing how much Kafka influenced Borges), and even the ones that aren’t excellent are often interesting (such as Eleven Sons, where Kafka establishes a cast sans a story), but they aren’t his best works.

Instead, Kafka’s best are his longer short stories and novellas, which are lengthy enough for you to be completely submerged in the atmosphere of Kafka’s world, but not long enough that the effect of the constant disorientation dulls (a problem I think The Castle suffers from). The Metamorphosis is the ultimate story of alienation and “otherness,” regardless of what exactly that consists of. The Trial is a brilliant story of society and institutions functioning outside of our comprehension, let alone our control, but still inexorably having a major impact on our lives. In The Penal Colony, my favorite of Kafka’s works, is about how people can buy into the mission of bureaucracies, even when those bureaucracies are doing horrible things, and can come to champion the mission and action of those bureaucracies even when they should long ago have ceased. A Hunger Artist presents the artistic drive to create as, not something to praise, but a necessary part of an artist- they must create, they could never do anything else. These are all the briefest of descriptions, as you could analyze any of these stories forever and a day, but the takeaway is that they are all different and all excellent. Together these works are essential reading for understanding how literature developed after Kafka, and more importantly they are excellent in their own right. You should read these. If you liked them, you should read the rest of Kafka’s published works. If you finish those and are still hungering for more, then you should move on to his unpublished material.

This leaves the question of how to grade a collection like this, that contains many of Kafka’s best works (though sadly not The Trial), but also contains his worst. If I were to grade every story contained in this collection the average would probably be a 3/5, but this collection gets a 4/5 because with Kafka, his best sticks with you, and his worst are just troubled dreams you forget upon waking from them.

[renderedtruth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I always wonder why Kafka gave the instruction to his friend to burn all of his writing when he died. I think he doubted if he would be a good or bad influence on the public's mind through the dissemination of his nightmarish visions of oppression.I liked the fables and short things in this book and some of them are so stark they made me laugh.