'When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into some kind of monstrous vermin.' With a bewildering blend of the everyday and the fantastical, Kafka thus begins his most famous short story, The Metamorphosis. A commercial traveller is unexpectedly freed from his dreary job by his inexplicable transformation into an insect, which drastically alters his relationship with his family. Kafka considered publishing it with two of the stories included here in a volume to be called Punishments. The Judgement also concerns family tensions, when a power struggle between father and son ends with the father passing an enigmatic judgement on the helpless son. The third story, In the Penal Colony, explores questions of power, justice, punishment, and the meaning of pain in a colonial setting. These three stories are flanked by two very different works. Meditation, the first book Kafka published, consists of light, whimsical, often poignant mood-pictures, while in the autobiographical Letter to his Father, Kafka analyses his difficult relationship in forensic and devastating detail.
| ISBN | 0199238553 | | Pages | 208 | | ISBN13 | 9780199238552
(What's this?) | | Volumes | 1 | | Publisher | Oxford University Press | | Weight (grammes) | 154 | | Imprint | Oxford University Press | | Published in | Oxford | | Format | Paperback | | Series title | Oxford World's Classics | | Publication date | 09 Jul 2009 | | Height (mm) | 196 | | Translator | Joyce Crick | | Width (mm) | 128 | | Library of Congress | 2009005387 | | Spine width (mm) | 4 | | DEWEY | 833.912 | | Academic level | General | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | |
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Meditation; The Judgement; The Metamorphosis; In the Penal Colony; Letter to his Father
Bracing surprises for buffs as well as an easy passage into the labyrinth for newcomers. Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
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