Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Description

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 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.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) Czech-born German-speaking writer. His major novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926), and Amerika (1927). Michael Hofmann is a poet, translator and essayist. His most recent poetry collection is Approximately Nowhere (Faber), and as a translator his work includes Kafka's The Man who Disappeared (Amerika). He is the translator of six books by Joseph Roth and was awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize for his translation of Roth's The String of Pearls. His latest book is Behind the Lines, a collection of essays.

"I think of a Kafka story as a perfect work of literary art, as approachable as it is strange, and as strange as it is approachable." -Michael Hofmann