Stories by Franz Kafka

Introduction

Franz Kafka wrote stories that have become inseparable from the way we understand modern life. "The Metamorphosis" (1915)—Gregor Samsa wakes up transformed into a giant insect and worries about missing work. "In the Penal Colony"—a machine inscribes the law onto the body of the condemned. "A Hunger Artist"—a professional faster whose art no one appreciates. "The Judgment"—a father condemns his son to death by drowning. These are not fantasies but the most precise descriptions ever written of what it feels like to be a human being in a world that makes no sense.

The Kafkaesque

Kafka gave his name to an adjective. The Kafkaesque is not merely the bizarre but the bizarre treated as normal. Gregor's family is not horrified by his transformation but inconvenienced. The officer in the penal colony is enthusiastic about his machine. Kafka wrote in a prose of clinical precision that makes the nightmare more, not less, disturbing. His stories achieve what he called "the ax for the frozen sea within us."

Key Takeaways

• The strange is treated as ordinary
• Bureaucracy and family are the real horrors
• Precision increases terror