What is Muslimness? What is femaleness? What is Polishness? These days we all find our anterior legs flailing before us. “Kafka’s survey of the insectile situation of young Jews in inner Bohemia can hardly be improved upon: ‘With their posterior legs they were still glued to their father’s Jewishness and with their wavering anterior legs they found no new ground.’ There is a sense in which Kafka’s Jewish question (‘What have I in common with Jews?’) has become everybody’s question, Jewish alienation the template for all our doubts. Only, since they do exist, I do not wish to hinder anyone who may want to, from keeping them." To Max Brod, his literary executor, he wrote: "Of all my writings the only books that can stand are these.Should they disappear altogether that would please me best. This collection brings together the stories that Kafka allowed to be published during his lifetime. Along with the horrifying machine of "In the Penal Colony," the merciless condemnation of son by father of "The Judgment," and the starvation of "A Hunger Artist," Kafka created some of the most haunting, timeless, and enduring images of the nightmare world of everyday life. One of the most terrifying stories ever written, "The Metamorphosis" introduces us to Gregor Samsa, the young man who wakes up to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect.
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