Books by Franz Kafka
The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka
by Franz Kafka, Reiner Stach & Shelley Frisch (trans.)
Franz Kafka's biographer, Reiner Stach, provides extensive commentary and explanations of the 100+ aphorisms the Czech writer composed while in Zürau (now Siřem in the Czech Republic) in 1917 and 1918. What's also very nice about this edition is that the aphorisms are provided both in the original German and in English translation. This is a book to read for a deeper understanding of Kafka and his thinking, rather than witty/universal quotes à la Nietzsche.
“The question might arise: Why read these two stories above all others? It is rather that they ought to be read along with all of Kafka’s stories, but they must not be missed…The two works belong together as works of punishment: Kafka always contemplated publishing several stories together under this rubric—Strafen. Both stories are built on a logomachy of sorts between two persons.” Read more...
Stanley Corngold, Literary Scholar
Franz Kafka: The Office Writings
by Franz Kafka (ed. Stanley Corngold, Jack Greenberg, and Benno Wagner)
“Most readers know Franz Kafka as the reclusive author of stories and novels that have since become monumental works of modern literature. Some readers also know him as a bureaucrat who, unhappy in his office, castigated the “hell of office life.” But few know that he rose at the end of his life to the position of Senior Legal Secretary at the Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institute for the Royal Imperial Kingdom of Austria-Hungary Prague (called, after 1918, the Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institute for the Czech Lands). Kafka was no Bartleby the Scrivener, no harmless office drudge. Rather, he was a brilliant innovator of social and legal reform in “the Manchester of the Empire,” which at the time of Kafka’s tenure, between 1908-1922, was one of the most highly developed industrial areas of Europe” Read more...
Stanley Corngold, Literary Scholar
“With Kafka, these letters, the diaries, the journals, which were also published much later—only appearing in Germany in 1967—give an incredible insight into the kind of existential terror that was really motivating him. It’s a constant tug-of-war between a desire for connection, and the solitude of his craft.” Read more...
The Best Literary Letter Collections
Lucas Zwirner, Artists & Art Critic
The Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka (ed. and translated by Stanley Corngold)
“The Metamorphosis tells the story of a turn-of-the-century, Central European textile salesman who wakes up one rainy morning to find himself changed, according to a not entirely reliable narrator, into a verminous insect—A HUGE ONE! This short novel, which the Nobel-Prize-winning intellectual Elias Canetti called “one of the few great, perfect poetic works of the century”—an opinion confirmed by Vladimir Nabokov—recounts the struggles of the afflicted person Gregor Samsa and his equally afflicted family to come to terms with this monstrous, unheard-of metamorphosis.” Read more...
Stanley Corngold, Literary Scholar
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
This classic account of bureaucratic tyranny resonates in any time and any place – which is to say, all times and all places – where people are abused by humans and institutions more powerful than them.
Interviews where books by Franz Kafka were recommended
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The Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka (ed. and translated by Stanley Corngold) -
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The Trial
by Franz Kafka -
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Franz Kafka: The Office Writings
by Franz Kafka (ed. Stanley Corngold, Jack Greenberg, and Benno Wagner) -
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Kafka's Selected Stories
by Franz Kafka -
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Kafka: The Early Years
by Reiner Stach & Shelley Frisch (trans.)
The Best Franz Kafka Books, recommended by Stanley Corngold
The Best Franz Kafka Books, recommended by Stanley Corngold
“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin”—Kafka, The Metamorphosis. This is one of the most famous opening lines in all of world literature, but how ‘Kafkaesque’ was Franz Kafka? What are our misconceptions about his life and work? Professor Stanley Corngold, one of the most influential Kafka scholars, introduces us to an “athlete of anguish”.
The Best Books on the Hong Kong Protests, recommended by Ben Bland
Around the world people have followed the standoff in Hong Kong with apprehension, as local protestors have taken on the might of China’s powerful Communist Party. Here Ben Bland, author of Generation HK and Director at Australian think tank the Lowy Institute, talks us through books to better understand what’s been going on these past few years and what’s at stake for Hong Kong’s citizens and activists.
The best books on Nigeria, recommended by Michael Peel
The FT‘s former West Africa correspondent talks us through five books that helped him to understand Nigeria.
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Letters to a Young Painter
by Rainer Maria Rilke -
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The Death and Letters of Alice James: Selected Correspondence
by Alice James -
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Letters to Felice
by Franz Kafka -
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Letters: 1925-1975
by Hannah Arendt & Martin Heidegger -
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Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence
by Elizabeth Bishop & Robert Lowell
The Best Literary Letter Collections, recommended by Lucas Zwirner
The Best Literary Letter Collections, recommended by Lucas Zwirner
The next release in the ekphrasis series from David Zwirner Books is Oscar Wilde’s The Critic as Artist, including an introduction by Michael Bracewell and a colour portrait of Wilde by Marlene Dumas. Head of Content Lucas Zwirner talks to Five Books about the inspiration he’s drawn from literary letters and how they inform the editorial direction of the publishing house.
