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Franz Kafka

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The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces Paperback – January 1, 1961

by Franz Kafka (Author), Edwin Muir (Translator), Willa Muir (Translator)

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Book is in very good condition.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Schocken Books
Publication date

January 1, 1961
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0006ARNQI
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Schocken Books; 1st Schocken paperback ed. edition (January 1, 1961)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces

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4.1 6 ratings

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Franz Kafka

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Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including “The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker.” He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.

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Franz Kafka (Praga, Imperio austrohúngaro, 3 de julio de 1883 - Kierling, Austria, 3 de junio de 1924) fue un escritor de origen judío nacido en Bohemia que escribió en alemán. Su obra está considerada una de las más influyentes de la literatura universal y está llena de temas y arquetipos sobre la alienación, la brutalidad física y psicológica, los conflictos entre padres e hijos, personajes en aventuras terroríficas, laberintos de burocracia, y transformaciones místicas.

Fue autor de tres novelas, El proceso (Der Prozeß), El castillo (Das Schloß) y El desaparecido (Amerika o Der Verschollene), la novela corta La metamorfosis (Die Verwandlung) y un gran número de relatos cortos. Además, dejó una abundante correspondencia y escritos autobiográficos. Su peculiar estilo literario ha sido comúnmente asociado con la filosofía artística del existencialismo --al que influenció-- y el expresionismo. Estudiosos de Kafka discuten sobre cómo interpretar al autor, algunos hablan de la posible influencia de alguna ideología política antiburocrática, de una religiosidad mística o de una reivindicación de su minoría etnocultural, mientras otros se fijan en el contenido psicológico de sus obras. Sus relaciones personales también tuvieron gran impacto en su escritura, particularmente su padre (Carta al padre), su prometida Felice Bauer (Cartas a Felice) y su hermana (Cartas a Ottla).

El término kafkiano se usa en el idioma español para describir situaciones surrealistas como las que se encuentran en sus libros y tiene sus equivalentes en otros idiomas. Solo unas pocas de sus obras fueron publicadas durante su vida. La mayor parte, incluyendo trabajos incompletos, fueron publicados por su amigo Max Brod, quien ignoró los deseos del autor de que los manuscritos fueran destruidos.

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Kafka: "Penal Colony".

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2018

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I have looked for this for years. Thank you! Finally!!

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Bryan Byrd

A collection of all the stories published in Kafka's lifetime

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2015

This review is for the Schocken Books edition of Franz Kafka’s THE PENAL COLONY, first published in 1948, and then in this paperback format in 1961 and reprinted multiple times. It contains the longer stories of CONVERSATION WITH THE SUPPLICANT, THE PENAL COLONY, THE METAMORPHOSIS, THE JUDGMENT, A HUNGER ARTIST, and A COUNTRY DOCTOR. Also included are eighteen shorter pieces—some as short as a paragraph—gathered under the title MEDITATIONS, and three examples of Kafka’s occasional and diary writing, as well as an epilogue by Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor.

I include the above information because there are so many editions of Kafka’s work around that it is relatively easy to find yourself with two or more copies that essentially repeat the contents, which is what happened to me. I also have a copy of Kafka’s The Complete Stories , also published by Schocken, which contains all of the stories in this earlier copy (plus more), save the three pieces of occasional writing/diary examples. Look for a review of that work to follow this one.

One of the interesting facts of this earlier edition is that it contains all the writing that Kafka actually saw published in his lifetime, save THE STOKER, which is conventionally placed as the opening chapter of Kafka’s unfinished Amerika . Near the end of his life, Kafka spoke to his good friend Max Brod, and told him that, ‘Of all my writings the only books that can stand are these: The Judgment, The Stoker, Metamorphosis, Penal Colony, Country Doctor, and the short story: A Hunger Artist…’ In fact, Kafka had asked his friend to destroy the rest of his writing, but Brod had plainly told him that he would do no such thing. So, in good conscience, Brod eventually published every scrap of paper that Kafka had given him prior to the time that tuberculosis finally carried away the writer.

Despite the powerful impact of The Trial (and, I assume, The Castle , which I have not read as yet), I like the mental exercise of taking just these examples—the ones Kafka felt confident enough to relinquish—and forming a picture of what he was trying to communicate. Momentarily setting aside his longer work, these shorter pieces are like fundamental clues, which, in turn, lead me to subtly different conclusions about novels like THE TRIAL, or even AMERIKA, than I might have arrived at without them. In an effort to not be too opaque, and yet leave room for other reader’s own conclusions, I’d say that reading these short stories makes me evaluate a novel like THE TRIAL as a personal story rather than a social one.

Anyway—there is no doubt in my mind that Kafka’s legacy was cemented with The METAMORPHOSIS, and from which the term Kafkaesque undoubtedly arose, which seems to me to be misapplied as much as not. That story is surely the one most readers are acquainted with, and I found it still affecting, thirty some years after the first time I read it. But either because of familiarity with that story, or just that I’m in a different stage of life, I thought THE PENAL COLONY was far and away more affecting. Not that that means I had a lot of success deciphering it—in a way, it reminded me a lot of the play Oedipus Tyrannus , in that it left me slightly bewildered as to where the story’s power came from, even though it was deeply stirring. Some commentary I read on THE PENAL COLONY made much of the religious symbolism in the story, which is definitely there, though it seemed to me that Kafka succeeded somehow despite some of this symbolism, which, by the end, is almost ham-handed.

Another treat were a few of the stories grouped under A COUNTRY DOCTOR and A HUNGER ARTIST, none of which I’d read before. Often these felt dream-like, as if they were Kafka’s transcription of actual dreams, others were more allegorical. If there is a use for such a word as Kafkaesque, my own opinion is that the definition is to be found here, in these stories, rather than as simply a synonym for ‘bizarre’. But more than this, in the end, I felt that by reading them, I gained a much deeper appreciation for Kafka as an artist. Somehow, considered only through the public perception of them, I’d begun to think of Kafka’s success with THE TRIAL and THE METAMORPHOSIS as almost accidental. But now, I feel the stories included here have helped me to see a more discernible vision in all of Kafka’s work, which also help me to extract a deeper appreciation for his most popular.

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lymnchx

gruesome and unusual absurdist short story entitled, "In the Penal Colony"

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2022

continuation of author's tradition of absurdism, this time with gruesome and unusual short story entitled, "In the Penal Colony"

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