Expanded SECOND Edition now has 9 stories & 3 excerpts: Judgment, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, An Address to the Academy, A Country Doctor, The Burrow, Investigations of a Dog, Hunger Artist, Josephine the Songstress & - Josef K.!, The Messenger and Nocturnal Investigations (from Kafka's novels). This translation of Kafka has a dual purpose, for starters it intends to provide English readers with a better translation: that Kafka's prose should find a more fitting analogy in 'modern (American) English' whereby it should come to life to a greater degree, and that his underlying philosophy-and I say philosophy in the greater sense-thus, should be grasped more readily. The second purpose is to explore issues regarding translation per se: what is the proper role of the translator? and why are so many translations done so poorly? The five stories included in this book have been carefully selected to present Kafka's literary genius in its historical genesis: from Metamophosis (1912), Report to the Academy (1917), In the Penal Colony (1915), The Burrow (1923/24) - to Kafka's "last word" Josephine the Songstress or The Mouse Folk which was written shortly before Kafka's death in 1924. This book also contains a short postscript on the art of translation that argues against the current modus operandi of translation theory, indeed, it goes so far as to quote from Kafka's diaries as well as from Schleiermacher and early Roman translators on the responsibility of the translator to capture the spirit of the work in an imaginative manner.
Author
Prague-born writer Franz Kafka wrote in German, and his stories, such as " The Metamorphosis " (1916), and posthumously published novels, including The Trial (1925), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world. Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature. His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and " In the Penal Colony " (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927). Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors. Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts. Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short "The Metamorphosis." Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard. Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera. Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.
