Franz Kafka’s short stories—shocking, complex,intriguing, and unsettling—show him at the height ofhis writing prowess. Kafka takes up universal themessuch as guilt, isolation, alienation, self-expression,cruelty, judgement, shame, sin, and redemption inthem. Hovering between dream and reality, his darkand brilliantly crafted stories are populated by bothhumans and animals. Intense, enigmatic, they arefilled with generous doses of irony and horror thatinspire the reader to search for meaning in the world’smaze. This collection features an impressive clutch ofhis short stories including In ‘The Penal Colony’, ‘TheHunger Artist’, ‘The Metamorphosis’, ‘The Burrow’,‘The Judgment’, ‘Before the Law’, ‘A Country Doctor’,and ‘The Great Wall of China’. ‘The Penal Colony’ isseeped in the dehumanising horror of WWI and mixesthe dazzle of modern technological advances with thebarbarism of archaic, absolute law. ‘The Metamorphosis’in which the alienated hero turns into an insect is anexquisite study of the human condition. The charactersin Kafka’s stories are hunted and haunted, wandering ina world governed by forces beyond their control.
