The Complete Stories (forword by John Updike)

The Complete Stories

Franz Kafka

Copyright © 1971 by Schocken Books Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Schocken Books Inc., New York.

Distributed by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

The foreword by John Updike was originally published in The New Yorker.

Foreword copyright © 1983 by John Updike.

Collection first published in 1971 by Schocken Books Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924.

The complete stories.

(Kafka Library)

Bibliography: p.

1. Kafka, Franz, 1885-1924 — Translations, English.

I. Glatzer, Nahum Norbet, 1903- . I. Title.

ü. Series.

PT2621.A26A2 1988 833'.912 88-18418

ISBN 0-8052-0873-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Contents

Copyright

Foreword by John Updike

TWO INTRODUCTORY PARABLES

Before the Law*

An Imperial Message*

THE LONGER STORIES

Description of a Struggle

Wedding Preparations in the Country

The Judgment*

The Metamorphosis*

In the Penal Colony*

The Village Schoolmaster [The Giant Mole]

Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor

The Warden of the Tomb

A Country Doctor*

The Hunter Gracchus

The Hunter Gracchus: A Fragment

The Great Wall of China

The News of the Building of the Wall: A Fragment

A Report to an Academy*

A Report to an Academy: Two Fragments

The Refusal

A Hunger Artist*

Investigations of a Dog

A Little Woman*

The Burrow

Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk*

THE SHORTER STORIES

Children on a Country Road*

The Trees*

Clothes*

Excursion into the Mountains*

Rejection*

The Street Window*

The Tradesman*

Absent-minded Window-gazing*

The Way Home*

Passers-by*

On the Tram*

Reflections for Gentlemen-Jockeys*

The Wish to Be a Red Indian*

Unhappiness*

Bachelor's Ill Luck*

Unmasking a Confidence Trickster*

Sudden Walk*

Resolutions*

Dream*

Up in the Gallery*

A Fratricide*

The Next Village*

A Visit to a Mine*

Jackals and Arabs*

The Bridge

The Bucket Rider

The New Advocate*

An Old Manuscript*

The Knock at the Manor Gate

Eleven Sons*

My Neighbor

A Crossbreed [A Sport]

The Cares of a Family Man*

A Common Confusion

The Truth About Sancho Panza

The Silence of the Sirens

Prometheus

The City Coat of Arms

Poseidon

Fellowship

At Night

The Problem of Our Laws

The Conscription of Troops

The Test

The Vulture

The Helmsman

The Top

A Little Fable

Home-Coming

First Sorrow*

The Departure

Advocates

The Married Couple

Give it Up!

On Parables

Postscript

Bibliography

Editors and Translators

On the Material

Chronology

Selected Writings on Kafka

Back Cover

* Published during Kafka's lifetime.

FOREWORD

By John Updike

All that he does seems to him, it is true, extraordinarily new, but also, because of the incredible spate of new things, extraordinarily amateurish, indeed scarcely tolerable, incapable of becoming history, breaking short the chain of the generations, cutting off for the first time at its most profound source the music of the world, which before him could at least be divined. Sometimes in his arrogance he has more anxiety for the world than for himself.

— KAFKA, "He" (Aphorisms)