The Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions)

by Franz Kafka

Overview

Writing in the first three decades of the twentieth century, Franz Kafka explored the themes of alienation, anxiety, and solitude in stories that were often surreally fantastic. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories collects more than 30 of Kafka's best-known stories in a new translation including "The Metamorphosis," "In the Penal Colony," "The Hunger Artist," "A Country Doctor," and "A Report to an Academy."
 
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories is one of Barnes & Noble's Collectible Editions classics. Each volume features authoritative texts by the world's greatest authors in an exquisitely designed foil-stamped binding, with distinctive colored edging and an attractive ribbon bookmark. Decorative, durable, and collectible, these books offer hours of pleasure to readers young and old and are an indispensable cornerstone for any home library.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781435165069
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble
Publication date:	08/29/2017
Series:	Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	206,206
File size:	699 KB

About the Author

Franz Kafka was born in 1883 to a well-to-do middle-class Jewish family. His father, the self-made proprietor of a wholesale haberdashery business, was a domineering man whose approbation Franz continually struggled to win. The younger Kafka's feelings of inadequacy and guilt form the background of much of his work and are made explicit in his "Letter to His Father" (excerpted in this volume), which was written in 1919 but never sent.

Kafka was educated in the German language schools of Prague and at the city's German University, where in 1908 he took a law degree. Literature, however, remained his sole passion. At this time he became part of a literary circle that included Franz Werfel, Martin Buber, and Kafka's close friend Max Brod. Encouraged by Brod, Kafka published the prose collection Observations in 1913. Two years later his story "The Stoker" won the Fontaine prize. In 1916 he began work on The Trial and between this time and 1923 produced three incomplete novels as well as numerous sketches and stories. In his lifetime some of his short works did appear: The Judgment (1916), The Metamorphosis (1916), The Penal Colony (1919), and The Country Doctor (1919).

Before his death of tuberculosis in 1924, Kafka had charged Max Brod with the execution of his estate, ordering Brod to burn the manuscripts. With the somewhat circular justification that Kafka must have known his friend could not obey such an order, Brod decided to publish Kafka's writings. To this act of "betrayal" the world owes the preservation of some of the most unforgettable and influential literary works of our century.

Biography courtesy of BN.com

Date of Birth:

July 3, 1883

Date of Death:

June 3, 1924

Place of Birth:

Prague, Austria-Hungary

Place of Death:

Vienna, Austria

Education:

German elementary and secondary schools. Graduated from German Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague.