Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories
by Franz Kafka
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Book Reviews of Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories
Book Review: Kafka: an author who captures the epic tale of tragedy
Summary: 5 Stars
Kafka's short stories are amazing. Few authors really harness tragedy like he does. Take "The Penal Colony" for instance. Kafka invents an ultimate devise of capital punishment, making it vile and disgusting, but coaxing the reader to almost rationalize the purpose of it's existence. As you finish the story though, you realize that it's not about an inhumane killing devise, but instead one man's obsession with it, and it's historical purposes. In a sense the story is a bad-mouthed eulogy of that man.One of Kafka's biggest achievements is his ability to have the reader sympathize with the "bad guy". Few authors can really get a reader emotionally involved with the book.
So take home this book and sit in an under-lighted room as you read it, but be prepared. Soon you will find yourself lost within the words of Franz Kafka.
Book Review: A review of the book, not the author.
Summary: 1 Stars
Let me preface this very negative review with this: I love Kafka. He's a great author and the shortcomings of this book, this book in particular, are not his.
That said, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! Whatever archaic methods the publisher, Schocken, uses to bind its books is in desperate need of revitalization. Within 1 week of purchasing this book it was threatening to fall to pieces. Within 2 weeks it became 4 volumes--it yet threatens to break into a weekly series.
If you enjoy breaking the binding on your paperbacks for easy reading beware, this book is poorly bound and breaking the binding, or even opening it much past 180 degrees, will cause the book to break asunder.
Buy these stories, just don't buy them in this book. Look elsewhere even if you must buy 2 or 3 other books to get everything.
Book Review: Contexts for Kafka
Summary: 5 Stars
Who could argue with the below reviews? The book is breathtaking. The short fiction is not really a "good introduction" to Kafka, though, it is Kafka at his best. In relation to what the top 10 reviewer (with whom I otherwise very much agree) says below, however, I would add that this imagination did not merely spring from the "ordinary life" of an insurance clerk, but from the extraordinary historical condition of turn-of-the-century German and Jewish Prague. Two recommendations: Mark Anderson's *Kafka's Clothes* is a literary analysis of several of these works in the context of the declining Habsburg Empire; Scott Spector's *Prague Territories* relates Kafka's whole generation of German-Jewish Prague writers to the nationality conflict between Czechs, Germans, and Jews. Contexts for Kafka!Book Review: Excellent introduction to Kafka unique style
Summary: 4 Stars
Most of the stroies are gems.
Kafka's unique style lies with the way he uses the language - he manages in bringing the reader to the darkest corners of the psyche using a matter-of-fact, almost bland collection of allegedly objective observations on his protagonists' emotions, thoughts and behaviours. These protagonists are sometimes human beings but some are neither human nor animals...One could call them Kafka imagination's progeny.
The reason I give it only 4 stars is because some of the stories are bordering on ...boring. I guess the reason in having them in this edition is in order to be able to call it 'The Complete Stories'.
Thus - if you are ready to accept some less than stellar writing, you'll be rewarded in most of the book by an extraordinary style and truly 'kafkaesque' ideas.
Book Review: The supreme art of the master
Summary: 5 Stars
These are stories that are parables, and whose meaning comes as Camus rightly said only when they are read and unread. They are among the great works of literature.
To describe a Kafka story is to describe something uncanny. It is to describe a transformation into an enigmatic world, where the precise material details of reality suggest other realities one vaguely senses and cannot really understand. It is the dwelling in a strange realm of anxiety and fear beyond the ordinary that can miraculously turn to a different direction entirely.
I cannot really say what Kafka's stories are.
I only know that whoever reads them will be in the presence of the uniquest of the unique in literature. For Kafka writing was prayer and these stories are invitations to prayer , not necessarily with him.