The Sons: The Judgment, The Stoker, The Metamorphosis, and Letter to His Father (The Schocken Kafka Library) by Franz Kafka (EPUB)

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From one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Trial: Three stories he published in his lifetime, including his best-known tale, “The Metamorphosis.”I have only one request,” Kafka wrote to his publisher Kurt Wolff in 1913. “‘The Stoker,’ ‘The Metamorphosis,’ and ‘The Judgment’ belong together, both inwardly and outwardly. There is an obvious connection among the three, and, even more important, a secret one, for which reason I would be reluctant to forego the chance of having them published together in a book, which might be called The Sons.”

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “The world of the officials and the world of the fathers are the same to Kafka. The similarity does not redound to this world’s credit; it consists of dullness, decay, and dirt. Uncleanness is so much the attribute of officials that one could almost regard them as enormous parasites. In the same way the fathers in Kafka’s strange families batten on their sons, lying on top of them like enormous parasites.” —Walter Benjamin From the Inside Flap I have only one request,” Kafka wrote to his publisher Kurt Wolff in 1913. “‘The Stoker,’ ‘The Metamorphosis,’ and ‘The Judgment’ belong together, both inwardly and outwardly. There is an obvious connection among the three, and, even more important, a secret one, for which reason I would be reluctant to forego the chance of having them published together in a book, which might be called The Sons.”Seventy-five years later, Kafka’s request is-granted, in a volume including these three classic stories of filial revolt as well as his own poignant “Letter to His Father,” another “son story” located between fiction and autobiography. A devastating indictment of the modern family, The Sons represents Kafka’s most concentrated literary achievement as well as the story of his own domestic tragedy.Grouped together under this new title and in newly revised translations, these texts — the like of which Kafka had never written before and (as he claimed at the end of his life) would never again equal — take on fresh, compelling meaning. From the Back Cover one request,” Kafka wrote to his publisher Kurt Wolff in 1913. “‘The Stoker,’ ‘The Metamorphosis,’ and ‘The Judgment’ belong together, both inwardly and outwardly. There is an obvious connection among the three, and, even more important, a secret one, for which reason I would be reluctant to forego the chance of having them published together in a book, which might be called The Sons.”Seventy-five years later, Kafka’s request is-granted, in a volume including these three classic stories of filial revolt as well as his own poignant “Letter to His Father,” another “son story” located between fiction and autobiography. A devastating indictment of the modern family, The Sons represents Kafka’s most concentrated literary achievement as well as the story of his own domestic tragedy.Grouped together under this new title and in newly revised translations, these texts — the like of which Kafka had never written before and (as he claimed at the end About the Author FRANZ KAFKA was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including “The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker.” He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The book is not lengthy, but it is dense in its content. Kafka describes and analyzes his relationship with his father, their characters, and the consequences of living in constant tension. Most of Kafka’s life is defined by his father, even when he’s totally absent.

⭐The Sons, The Metamorphosis, and letter to his father. Really a great creation. I read it all at once. could not put it down.

⭐Not cover ordered, totally different. Seller said I needed to compare isbn numbers to ensure I got the right version. I thought that advertising the book shown was all that was needed.

⭐No comment

⭐Excellent

⭐I was a little disappointed because the packaging suggested one thing and I was given an older version of the book. It was a litle misleading.

⭐I did not expect the book to be in such poor condition. The price should have been much lower.

⭐At one point in his career, Kafka made a request of his publisher that three of his stories be published together in a single volume, citing “an obvious connection among the three, and, even more important, a secret one.” The publisher did not honor this request in Kafka’s lifetime, but Schocken Books has since made Kafka’s envisioned volume a reality, including use of Kafka’s suggested title: The Sons.The first story is “The Judgment,” where a dutiful son contentedly looks after his feeble, aged father and prepares for his wedding… until a bout of nearly incomprehensible guilt utterly alters the relationship and the son’s plans. Next is “The Stoker,” the short story that is also the first chapter in the unfinished novel Amerika. Here a rejected, homesick youth temporarily finds a replacement for the father he has left behind in Europe. Rounding out Kafka’s trio is his famed piece “The Metamorphosis,” where Gregor Samsa awakens to find he has transformed into a giant insect, a situation that he regards with a surreal and comical lack of amazement, but which causes great consternation for his dependent parents and sister. The stories are, of course, excellent. More tightly written and polished than the fragmentary novels Kafka left behind, they highlight Kafka’s taste for absurdity in the midst of banality and his characteristic injection of sly humor into scenarios that are sad or nightmarish from the characters’ perspectives.The editors of The Sons included one final piece, a piece that was not in Kafka’s request to his publisher. Indeed, this piece was among the personal papers that Kafka asked to have burned unread after his death. It is Kafka’s “Letter to His Father.” Written when Kafka was thirty-six years old, the lengthy letter endeavors to answer his father’s question of “…why I maintain I am afraid of you.” Stripped of the playfulness of Kafka’s fiction, the letter is like a dash of cold water in the face – both painful and clarifying. Suddenly the bizarre behavior of the sons in the preceding stories, their ingratiating, slavish devotion to fathers who reward them with rejection, intimidation, and violence, becomes more comprehensible as one reads the naked railings of Kafka to the father he both admired and feared. I’ve seen this letter dismissed as being unrealistic: objectively, Hermann Kafka was not a violent monster. This misses the point. This is not an objective assessment of the complex relationship between a parent and child. This is the desperate plea for understanding from a wounded adult child, speaking bluntly and truthfully about his subjective experience of the relationship. It is the tragic story of a clash of personalities; of a timid, sensitive child overwhelmed by a vigorous, aggressive parent. That the parent was likely well-intentioned and never understood the injurious affect he had on his son does not change the son’s experience. Even more tragically, the letter makes it clear that even at the age of thirty-six, Franz Kafka still on some level perceived himself as a scrawny little boy, disappearing in the shadow of his strong father. Speaking from my own personal experience, I will warn you that if you’ve had any similar issues with your own parents, reading this letter will likely activate some painful emotions, but it can also provide a sense of catharsis.Any of the individual stories in this brief collection is a worthwhile read on its own. Together they pack a powerful punch. I do advise keeping the publisher’s order and saving reading the “Letter” for after reading the fiction. Enjoy the stories and see what you get out of them. Then read the letter, and perhaps revisit the stories, and see if you have a new perspective on Kafka’s multilayered literary creations.

⭐Read these small pieces and being to wonder about the paradoxical nature of being.

⭐I got a used old copy of the book

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