Paperback, 298 pages
English language
Published Nov. 8, 2007 by Penguin Books.
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 and alienation; 'Meditation', a collection of his earlier studies; 'The Judgement', written in a single night of frenzied creativity; 'The Stoker', the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, 'The Aeroplanes at Brescia', Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.
3.5
The Metamorphosis is the best story here but it also has some very interesting ones...
I guess my disappointment is directed at myself - or at least maybe that's how Kafka would describe it, although not out loud. Few of the stories stand out as clearly above average, and those have already been highy praised (and with good reason). The rest are faintly interesting - maybe more so if one has a keen interest in mr Kafka's authorship/life.
But from a reader's perspective, I find most of the stories in here unable to give me any pleasure, other than that they are, for the most part, really short.
Those that do strike a note with me, however. Those few stories are simply amazing!
