Like George Orwell, Franz Kafka has given his name to a world of nightmare, but in Kafka's world, it is never completely clear just what the nightmare is. The Trial, where the rules are hidden from even the highest officials, and if there is any help to be had, it will come from unexpected sources, is a chilling, blackly amusing tale that maintains, to the very end, a relentless atmosphere of disorientation. Superficially about bureaucracy, it is in the last resort a description of the absurdity of 'normal' human nature. Still more enigmatic is The Castle. Is it an allegory of a quasi-feudal system giving way to a new freedom for the subject? The search by a central European Jew for acceptance into a dominant culture? A spiritual quest for grace or salvation? An individual's struggle between his sense of independence and his need for approval? Is it all of these things? And K? Is he opportunist, victim, or an outsider battling against elusive authority? Finally, in his fables, Kafka deals in dark and quirkily humorous terms with the insoluble dilemmas of a world which offers no reassurance, and no reliable guidance to resolving our existential and emotional uncertainties and anxieties.

In July 1914, Franz Kafka's fiancee Felice broke off their engagement in a humiliating public tribunal, surrounded by her friends and family, and the other woman with whom Kafka had recently fallen in love. Broken and bereft, Kafka - at the height of his writing powers - turned the experience into his masterpiece, The Trial, where his lovers became the faceless prosecutors of Josef K. In Kafka's Other Trial, Canetti explores each letter that Kafka wrote to his fiancee, from their first tender moments together to his final letter and his refusal to reconcile. In this affecting book, he offers moving insights into the creativity of Franz Kafka and the torment he suffered as a man, a lover, and a writer.

»Immer mehr von Schnee uberhauft, immer zweckloser werdend, stand ich da.« Einige von Kat Menschik illustrierte Bucher sind inzwischen Kult – nun gestaltet sie eine eigene Reihe: Werke der Weltliteratur und andere Lieblingstexte, in Szene gesetzt von Kat Menschik. Ein eisig kalter, schneeverwehter Winter; ein Landarzt »in gro?er Verlegenheit«. Ein Notfalleinsatz steht an, aber sein Kutschpferd verendet gerade in der Kalte. Vergeblich schickt der Landarzt Rosa, sein Dienstmadchen, ins Dorf, um ein neues Pferd zu leihen, doch keines ist zu haben. Plotzlich taucht ein ratselhafter Pferdeknecht mit zwei prachtigen kraftigen Tieren auf und spannt sie an. Statt aber auf dem Kutschbock Platz zu nehmen, sturzt er sich auf Rosa, klatscht in die Hande – und bevor der Landarzt seiner Dienerin zur Hilfe eilen kann, rei?en die Pferde ihn in der Kutsche mit sich … So der Anfang der Titelgeschichte von »Ein Landarzt. Kleine Erzahlungen«, die 1919 bei Kurt Wolff erschienen sind. Den anderen Figuren des Bandes geht es nicht viel besser. Ob z. B. in »Auf der Galerie«, »Vor dem Gesetz«, im »Bericht fur eine Akademie«, oder beim Odradek in »Sorge eines Hausvaters« – Kafkas Figuren werden getrieben von seltsamen Geschicken und sie tragen dunkle Geheimnisse in sich. Freilich geht es in diesen Geschichten alles andere als blutleer zu – Kat Menschik gibt mit ihren farbenprachtig schillernden Bildern eine grandiose Interpretation des ersten Erzahlbandes von Franz Kafka. Grandiose Texte, feinste Ausstattungen, ungewohnliche Materialien, uberraschende Interpretationen. Alle Bande im selben Format, alle Bande mit dreiseitigem Farbschnitt – aber jeder Band in anderer Ausstattung und jeder Band mit eigener Bildsprache. Ein Fest fur Geist und Sinne.

Poor old Gregor. One day he's depressed about his dreary traveling salesman gig, the next, he's roaching around the apartment and disgusting his family. All that's left is creeping the walls and eating garbage. How's his sis ever going to find a sugar daddy with her grotty bro in tow?

One of the great works of the twentieth century, Kafka's The Trial has been read as a study of political power, a pessimistic religious parable, or a crime novel where the accused man is himself the problem. In it, a man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. Faced with this ambiguous but threatening situation, Josef K. gradually succumbs to its psychological pressure. One of the iconic figures of modern world literature, Kafka writes about universal problems of guilt, responsibility, and freedom. He offers no solutions, but provokes his readers to arrive at meanings of their own. Mike Mitchell's translation captures Kafka's distinctive style. Based on the best available German text, it includes not only the main text but the chapters Kafka left incomplete. In his Introduction, Ritchie Robertson considers the many puzzles in the novel and the different interpretations to which the novel has been subjected. The book also includes a Biographical Preface, an up-to-date bibliography, and a chronology of Kafka's life.

'Dear God!' said the guard. 'Why can't you just co-operate in a situation like yours? You seem to be annoying us needlessly, we who of all your fellow men are most likely to have your interests at heart just now!' Josef K., a senior official in a large bank, is arrested although what he has done is not made clear. His life is thrown into turmoil as he becomes enmeshed in a struggle to prove his innocence. But he is battling against baffling rules administered by a remote and uncaring bureaucracy. And he doesn't help his case by talking when he should be listening. Darkly humorous, The Trial is an unsettling and thought-provoking work which can be interpreted in many different ways. This is a new translation of a singular and compelling novel, one of the great enigmatic works of modern literature.

Josef К., a senior official in a large bank, is arrested although what he has done is never made clear. His life is thrown into turmoil as he becomes enmeshed in a struggle to prove his innocence. But he is battling against baffling rules administered by a remote and uncaring bureaucracy. And he doesn't help his case by talking when he should be listening. Darkly humorous, The Trial is an unsettling and thought-provoking work which can be interpreted in many different ways. This is a new translation of a singular and compelling novel, one of the great enigmatic works of modern literature.

The classic translation of Kafka's great work of psychological horror 'It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary' Rediscover Kafka's classic work of psychological horror. The Trial is the terrifying tale of Joseph K., a respectable functionary in a bank, who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. A nightmare vision of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the insanity of twentieth-century totalitarianism has resonated with readers for generations.

The Castle is 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. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, and reason and nonsense, K.'s struggles in the absurd, labyrinthine world where he finds himself seem to reveal an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. Kafka began The Castle in 1922 and it was never finished, yet this, the last of his three great novels, draws fascinating conclusions that make it feel strangely complete.

'He is the greatest German writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such novelists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him' Vladimir Nabokov The story of K. and his arrival in a village where he is never accepted, and his relentless, unavailing struggle with authority in order to gain entrance to the castle that seems to rule it. K.'s isolation and perplexity, his begging for the approval of elusive and anonymous powers, epitomises Kafka's vision of twentieth-century alienation and anxiety.

The story of the mysterious indictment, trial and reckoning forced upon Kafka’s Joseph K. is one of the twentieth century’s master parables which has influenced almost every major writer since. By rendering the absurd and the terrifying with scrupulous factual accuracy and evenness of tone, Kafka presents the world we recognize in a gripping narrative which is also a revelation of its hidden significance.

Summoned to take up the position of a land surveyor to the mysterious lord of a castle, the character known as K. finds himself in a bitter and baffling struggle to contact his new employer and go about his duties. Kafka’s parable, which moves between the mundane and the transcendent, is one of the twentieth century’s greatest contributions to the small body of world myths.

On his thirtieth birthday, the bank clerk Josef K. is suddenly arrested by mysterious agents for an unspecified crime. He is told that he will be set free, but must make regular appearances at a court in the attic of a tenement building while his trial proceeds. Although he never comes to know the particulars of his case, Josef K. finds his life taken over by the opaque bureaucratic procedures and is tormented by the psychological pressures exerted by his legal nightmare. Published the year after the author’s death, but written ten years earlier, The Trial is the most acclaimed of Kafka’s three novels, and is both a haunting meditation on freedom and the powerlessness of the individual in the face of state power, and an ominous prefiguration of the totalitarian excesses of the twentieth century.

The Castle is 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. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, and reason and nonsense, K.'s struggles in the absurd, labyrinthine world where he finds himself seem to reveal an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. Kafka began The Castle in 1922 and it was never finished, yet this, the last of his three great novels, draws fascinating conclusions that make it feel strangely complete.

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.

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.