Selected Stories

A Spectator Best Book of the Year “It’s an extremely handsome, well-designed book, and you couldn’t ask for a better introduction to Kafka…If you’ve never read Kafka before or if you already love him, you’ll still want Harman’s Selected Stories.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post A superb new translation of Kafka’s classic stories, authoritatively annotated and beautifully illustrated. Selected Stories presents new, exquisite renderings of short works by one of the indisputable masters of the form. Award-winning translator and scholar Mark Harman offers the most sensitive English rendering yet of Franz Kafka’s unique German prose—terse, witty, laden with ambiguities and double meanings. With his in-depth biographical introduction and notes illuminating the stories and placing them in context, Harman breathes new life into masterpieces that have often been misunderstood. Included are sixteen stories, arranged chronologically to convey a sense of Kafka’s artistic development. Some, like “The Judgment,” “In the Penal Colony,” “A Hunger Artist,” and “The Transformation” (usually, though misleadingly, translated as “The Metamorphosis”), represent the pinnacle of Kafka’s achievement. Accompanying annotations highlight the wordplay and cultural allusions of the original German, pregnant with irony and humor that English readers have often missed. Although Kafka has frequently been cast as a loner, in part because of his quintessential depictions of modern alienation, he had a number of close companions. Harman draws on Kafka’s diaries, extensive correspondence, and engagement with early twentieth-century debates about Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and Zionism to construct a rich portrait of Kafka in his world. A work of both art and scholarship, Selected Stories transforms our understanding and appreciation of a singular imagination.

About the Author :
Mark Harman is Professor Emeritus of German and English at Elizabethtown College. His award-winning translations include Franz Kafka’s Amerika: The Missing Person and The Castle, as well as Herman Hesse’s Soul of the Age: Selected Letters and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

Review :
Richly illustrated and filled with fascinating references to contemporary sources, critical commentary and relevant passages from Kafka’s letters and diaries…Anyone interested in knowing more about these stories will find this volume a treasure trove. [Harman’s] perceptive annotation and translation highlights every subtle shade of humour and brilliant aphorism in these singular tales…a splendid new selection from Kafka’s fiction…This is academic work as it should be done, in faithful service to the text and to its readers. It's an extremely handsome, well-designed book, and you couldn't ask for a better introduction to Kafka. May just be the best book published this year…Harman’s translation moved me deep into Kafka’s world, bringing to light Kafka’s friends, girlfriends, parents, sisters, and most of all, his concerns as a writer and as a Jew in a way no other book I have ever read has. Prefaced by one of the most perceptive critical essays I’ve read, Mark Harman’s new translation...proved the perfect way of reacquainting myself with Kafka’s kinked worldview. In meticulous footnotes [Harman] tells us why he has chosen to translate certain German words the way he has…There are many footnotes like that – informative and judicious, not imposing any rigid interpretation but suggesting them. The endnotes are also useful…The apparatus to the Selected Stories takes up almost half the book, but it is not a burden at all. It is very welcome. Offers some of Kafka’s best-known short writings alongside more obscure, fragmentary passages, arranged chronologically. An extensive introduction places Kafka within his context and teases out parallels between his life and art…[it] also does a good job of unsettling the stern image of Kafka that exists in the popular imagination; extracts from letters and diaries show him as surprisingly tender and funny. [This book] gives us crisp new translations of Franz Kafka’s best novellas and tales and also a substantial scholarly introduction to his life and work…Ironies…lurk in Kafka’s fiction: in dry, dispassionate sentences that deliver disconcerting changes of perspective and in slyly matter-of-fact descriptions of uncanny events. Harman’s translations recreate these subtle effects with admirable precision; and by uncovering the veins of humour and hope in Kafka’s dark art, he may well win new readers for this gentle master of the absurd. [The] introduction replete with biographical details, pictures and references is a treasure of information, a succinct and adequate contextualization of Kafka the person as well as of Kafka the artist. Under Harman's pen it becomes a fascinating narrative in itself…the translation, overall, is a worthy tribute to Kafka the modem master, and the meticulous yet easily accessible and readable annotations are a great resource for any reader with even a half serious interest in Kafka. These layers of additional meaning…make Harman’s translations so rich, uncovering hidden layers that may well have been missed previously by even the most dedicated English-language readers of Kafka. Mark Harman is the finest living Kafka translator, and this new volume is a trove of riches. The introduction is enlightening, the notes are invaluable, and of course the prose is a constant delight. No one else brings Kafka to life so vividly and so elegantly. This is more than simply a fresh version of Kafka’s most famous stories. With a brilliant introduction and useful notes, it’s a feast for all serious readers of modern literature. Mark Harman adds immensely to our understanding and appreciation of Kafka as he pries open and recreates the major tales in ways not seen since Edwin and Willa Muir’s first translations. A stunning book. Mark Harman’s translations of Kafka are brilliant. After making all of us look at Amerika: The Missing Person through new eyes, he now makes us see the most canonical, influential tales anew, through a twenty-first-century sensibility. Harman’s notes are meticulous and clear, reflecting his deep knowledge of the texts and their place in Kafka’s world. Selected Stories has the quality we recognize from his earlier work—clarity and readability for our age.