'When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect ...' So begins Franz Kafka's most famous story Die Verwandlung or Metamorphosis. Franz Kafka is one of the most intriguing writers of the twentieth century; adjective 'kafkaesque' evokes his bizarre world in which characters grapple with faceless bureaucracy, find themselves turned into insects, or starve themselves to death in the name of art. This Very Short Introduction Ritchie Robertson provides the newcomer with an up-to-date and accessible examination of this fascinating author: beginning with an examination of Kafka's life, he then goes on to discuss some of the major themes that emerge in Kafka's work, using his short story Metamorphosis as a recurring example.

The Enriched Classics series offers readers such features as: - A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information - A chronology of the author's life and work - A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context - An outline of key themes and plot points to help guide the reader's own interpretations - Detailed explanatory notes - Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work - Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction - A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience - Reader-friendly font size

作为一个以文学为使命的作家，卡夫卡应当属于当代主义文学，卡夫卡文学表面上看很传统，实质上却是具有着对于现代理性的一种颠覆性的解构功能。他的精神品质似乎更接近后现代思想家，他文学的审美品格也更像是后现代的经典。卡夫卡确实处在“现代与后现代相遇之处”，处在现代与后现代两种文化品格的交汇处。 　　卡夫卡是一个在西方文化语境中生长起来的“游牧文学”的代表。卡夫卡文学的“解构”特征，既不同于现代主义，其解构的力度远远地超出了现代主义范畴，其强劲的颠覆性，可与后现代主义相媲美；卡夫卡文学的“解构”特征，也不同于后现代主义，其解构的效应是间接地发生的。卡夫卡在文学中总是把自己作为直接的、唯一的解构对象，是一种“自我性解构”，卡夫卡文学解构的意义或许更为深远，更符合人类文化自我发展中所必需的一种内在机制。 　　《卡夫卡现象学》是一部力作，这部著作是从卡氏作品中寻觅特殊的文化意义，可以称为一部思想史研究著作。作者将卡夫卡放到西方思想文化发展的进程中来考察，发挥卡夫卡文学世界所蕴藏的文化乃至哲学意义。在这一视角中，作者对卡夫卡作品中“弱者”形象予以特别注意，为他的文化解码绘制一幅“弱者”生存图，显示出卡氏作品中突破威权的政治寓言。这部著作思路开阔，立论高远，分析细致而透辟，尤其在涉及思想史研究的一些关键问题上有精邃的见解，可称是国内卡夫卡研究的翘楚之作。

Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. This new edition is based upon the work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it. In his brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproduces the distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel that is as full of energy and power as it was when it was first written.

在线阅读本书 The story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home, seems to depict, like a dream from the deepest recesses of consciousness, an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. In his introduction, Idris Parry shows that duality-to Kafka a perpetual human condition-lies at the heart of this essentially imaginative magnum opus: dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, reason and nonsense, harmony and disintegration. Thus, The Castle is an unfinished novel that feels strangely complete, in which a labyrinthine world, described in simple language and absurd fantasy, reveals a profound truth. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

在线阅读本书 A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis--an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door--becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral.

Writings by and about Kafka and textual notes accompany this translation of his early-twentieth-century work. The Metamorphosis (in German, Die Verwandlung) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915, and arguably the most famous of his works along with the longer works The Trial and The Castle. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a giant "monstrous vermin" (see Lost in translation, below). It is widely regarded as a highly symbolic tale with various interpretations. From Publishers Weekly Kuper has adapted short works by Kafka into comics before, but here he tackles the most famous one of all: the jet-black comedy that ensues after the luckless Gregor Samsa turns into a gigantic bug. The story loses a bit in translation (and the typeset text looks awkward in the context of Kuper's distinctly handmade drawings). A lot of the humor in the original comes from the way Kafka plays the story's absurdities absolutely deadpan, and the visuals oversell the joke, especially since Kuper draws all the human characters as broad caricatures. Even so, he works up a suitably creepy frisson, mostly thanks to his drawing style. Executed on scratchboard, it's a jittery, woodcut-inspired mass of sharp angles that owes a debt to both Frans Masereel (a Belgian woodcut artist who worked around Kafka's time) and MAD magazine's Will Elder. The knotty walls and floors of the Samsas' house look like they're about to dissolve into dust. In the book's best moments, Kuper lets his unerring design sense and command of visual shorthand carry the story. The jagged forms on the huge insect's belly are mirrored by folds in business clothes; thinking about the debt his parents owe his employer, Gregor imagines his insectoid body turning into money slipping through an hourglass. Every thing and person in this Metamorphosis seems silhouetted and carved, an effect that meshes neatly with Kafka's sense of nightmarish unreality. From School Library Journal Adult/High School-Gregor Samsa wakes up and discovers he has been changed into a giant cockroach. Thus begins "The Metamorphosis," and Kuper translates this story masterfully with his scratchboard illustrations. The text is more spare, but the visuals are so strongly rendered that little of the original is changed or omitted. Though the story remains set in Kafka's time, Kuper has added some present-day touches, such as fast-food restaurants, that do not detract from the tale. He has used the medium creatively, employing unusual perspectives and panel shapes, and text that even crawls on the walls and ceilings, as Gregor does. The roach has an insect body but human facial expressions. Once he is pelted with the apple, readers can watch his rapid decline, as his body becomes more wizened and his face more gaunt. This is a faithful rendition rather than an illustrated abridgment. 　　　　---Jamie Watson, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore Book Dimension Height (mm) 175 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Width (mm) 105

Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power previously unknown to English language readers.

This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes 'Metamorphosis', his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; 'Meditation', a collection of his earlier studies; 'The Judgement', written in a single night of frenzied creativity; 'The Stoker', the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece and 'The Aeroplanes at Brescia', Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.

这本书的内容选自卡夫卡的《随笔集》与《谈话录》，收录的主要是一些能够体现这位大文豪与大思想家对人生世事思考的文章与段落警句，包括《恶是善的星空》、《前世的证明》、《人的弱点》、《权力意志的罪孽》、《文学是精巧的奢侈品》等37篇文章。

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle–yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own. Extravagant in its accomplishment, Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s truly great storytellers at the height of his powers.

孩子与父母之间玩的是一场教育游戏和成长游戏。游戏的规则是由父母先行确定的，在玩的过程中，孩子先是遵守规则，继而质疑规则、躲避规则，最终挑战规则。这个过程的渐变事实上发生在每一个家庭之中。 摆在我们面前的这封信，牵涉事关现代家庭关系的一系列重大问题。在信中，卡夫卡将自己在成长过程中所受父亲的精神压抑和盘托出，对个性成长、身份认同、家庭游戏、角色转换、教育方式与教育结果之间的关系等问题进行了深入的探讨和反思，是解读现代家庭关系的经典文本。

本书概述了卡夫卡波折四起的生活，细致分析了他的写作技巧以及他是如何反映现代主题的——比如文化中身体的地位，机构对人的压迫，尼采宣布“上帝死了”之后宗教的发展前景。本书以现代视角和易于理解的方式刻画出了一位独具魅力的作家，向我们展示了该如何阅读和理解卡夫卡那些令人迷惑的和引人入胜的作品。

★在所有传说的开端和头，与卡夫夫一起拥抱孤独 ★你不必具有他的性格，却同样备感胁迫而忧惧不宁；你不必有相似的经历，却同样为异化的可怕而震撼；你不必是寂寞无期的单身汉，却完全可以感同身受；你不必是孤独无援的卡夫卡，却进行着共同的抗争。 ★这世界和我的自身在难解难分的搏斗中，看来非撕碎我的躯体不可。 ——  卡夫卡 ★目标虽有，却无路可循；我们谓之路者，不过是彷徨而已。 ——  卡夫卡 弗兰茨·卡夫卡是20世纪最具影响力的作家。他的作品至今一直被认为是摸不透、含糊不清、既吸引人又令人毛骨悚然的事物的化身。这部传记把卡夫卡的生活和文学创作放在1880至1920年时期各重要文化思潮的相互联系之中加以考察。它展现的是游手好闲者和孤独者，旅行者和胆怯者，禁欲者和爱恋者，心醉神迷者和怀疑者，恐怖专家和讽刺大师……人们可以从其犹太神话和欧洲现代派之间的特殊地位中对卡夫卡的艺术特性获得新的认识。 本书将卡夫卡性格的多面性与独特性跟其作品的深奥性与神秘性放在20世纪欧洲波澜壮阔的现代主义思潮中加以考察，并结合现代心理学和民族学以及布拉格的地域文化传统，描绘出一个立体的、轮廓鲜明的、背景清晰的完整的卡夫卡。

《城堡》的主人公K踩着积雪，来到城堡前的村子。他长途跋涉来到这里，要求进入城堡面见城堡的主人。他名义上是个土地测量员，但实际上是要取得伯爵的准许，能在这里成家立业。但他从到达这个村庄的那一刻起，就遭到了种种阻挠……

这套《卡夫卡全集》选自德国菲舍尔出版社1994年校勘本《卡夫卡全集》，包括作者创作的生前发表和未发表的全部长篇、中篇和短篇小说。这个校勘本忠实地根据卡夫卡的手稿，既保留了原作无规则的标点符号和异乎寻常的书写方式，又突出了原作完成和未完成的两个部分，同时也纠正了其他一些版本的错误，原原本本地再现了作者手搞的风貌。 第1卷：短篇小说；第2卷：长篇小说《失踪者》；第3卷：长篇小说《诉讼》；第4卷：长短篇小说《城堡》；第5卷：随笔、谈话录；第6卷：日记（1910-1923）；第7卷：书信（1902-1924）；第8卷：家书；第9-10卷：致菲莉斯情书、致密伦娜情书。

卡夫卡生前鲜为人知,他的作品也未受到重视，可在他身后，文名鹊起，蜚声世界文坛；他的崇拜者们一次次掀起“卡夫卡热”。他的《城堡》、《美国》、《诉讼》、《变形记》等小说自第二次世界大战以来在全世界广为流传，对现代派文学产生了极大的影响，他被推崇为现代派文学的奠基人，被人们称为“作家中之作家”；他的许多小说已成为作家必定研读的作品，被人们说成是“需要用心去阅读的作品”。