Czech

Gregor Samsa erwacht eines Morgens nicht mehr als Mensch, sondern als 'ungeheures Ungeziefer'. In der 'Strafkolonie' graviert ein rätselhafter Apparat den Verurteilten ihr Urteil grausam in die Haut. Im kurzen Text 'Unglücklichsein' tritt an einem Novemberabend unerwartet ein Gespenst ins Zimmer, und über den jungen Kaufmann Georg Bendemann wird ein vernichtendes väterliches 'Urteil' ausgeprochen. Im 'Brief an den Vater' konfrontiert Kafka uns mit einer schonungslosen autobiografischen Selbst- und Vateranalyse. Kafka fasziniert wie kein anderer deutschsprachiger Autor der Weltliteratur bis heute. Dieser in Cabra-Leder gebundene Band mit geprägtem Cover enthält 14 Erzählungen und den berühmten Brief:'Unglücklichsein''Das Urteil''Die Verwandlung''In der Strafkolonie''Ein Landarzt''Eine kaiserliche Botschaft''Ein Hungerkünstler''Josefine, die Sängerin oder das Volk der Mäuse''Die Brücke''Das Schweigen der Sirenen''Prometheus''Kleine Fabel''Gibs auf!''Zur Frage der Gesetze''Brief an den Vater'- Kafkas Erzählungen in Leder- 'Die Verwandlung', 'Brief an den Vater', 'Das Urteil' und viele andere Werke des Jahrhundertautors in einem Band- 14 berühmte Erzählungen und 'Der Brief an den Vater'- 'Kafkas Absurdität trifft den digitalen Zeitgeist, sein literarisches Werk boomt bei der Gen Z. Seine Existenzkrisen leben in Memes und viralen Trends weiter.' SWR- 'Kafka, Kafka, immer wieder Kafka!' TAZ

Persönliches vom Schöpfer der 'Verwandlung' und des 'Prozess''Heute früh zum ersten Mal seit langer Zeit wieder die Freude an der Vorstellung eines in meinem Herzen gedrehten Messers.'Nicht nur Kafkas weltberühmte Werke - 'Prozess' oder 'Schloss', 'Verwandlung' oder 'Urteil' - lohnen. Seine Prosa fasziniert gerade auch im Kleinen, Persönlichen. In Tagebüchern und Oktavheften überliefert, teils wie achtlos in Briefen fallengelassen, funkeln seine Sätze durch ihre Klarheit, durch ihre bis ins Mark treffende Schonungslosigkeit und Drastik. In diesem Kafka-Lesebuch sind Prosafragmente des Prager Dichters versammelt.'Die ungeheure Welt, die ich im Kopfe habe. Aber wie mich befreien und sie befreien, ohne zu zerreißen. Und tausendmal lieber zerreißen, als in mir sie zurückhalten oder begraben. Dazu bin ich ja hier, das ist mir ganz klar.'- 'Der Mensch ist eine ungeheuere Sumpffläche' Franz Kafka- Kafka privat: Ausgewählte Briefe, Notizen und Aphorismen hier neu zusammengestellt- 'Gen Z ist in Franz Kafka verknallt - und macht den Autor zum Tiktok-Star' Stern

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books<BR><BR>Closely Watched Trains tells the story of Milo¿ Hrma, a young railroad apprentice coming of age in wartime Czechoslovakia. Milo¿ is overwhelmed with worries - about his virginity, his love for the conductor, and ongoing scandals in the stationmaster's office - besides which the idea of fighting the Germans seems a simple affair. Poignant, humorous and the inspiration behind the 1966 Academy Award-winning film, this is a small masterpiece from one of the best Czech writers of the twentieth century.

The Trial by Franz Kafka is 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.<BR>Chiltern creates the most beautiful editions of the World's finest literature. Your favorite classic titles in a way you have never seen them before: the tactile layers, fine details and beautiful colors of these remarkable covers make these books feel extra special and look striking on any shelf.<BR>

Kafka's last great, unfinished novel - the book that hangs over the whole modern era like a nightmare. With a new introduction and notes by John ZilcoskyThe 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 real winter warmer of a read'¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿'An absolute treat' Sue Moorcroft, Sunday Times BestsellerIt's been years since Anna has seen Leo Knight. And of all the apartments in all the cities in all the world, he just happens to walk in to her cosy new attic home - as her new housemate.As the two walk the cobbled streets of Prague, taking in the sights and sounds from Wenceslas Square, frosted with snow, to the soft glow of candlelit Charles Bridge, the enchantment of the City of a Hundred Spires soon starts to work its magic on them...Praise for Julie Caplin:'One unputdownable story' Sunday Times Bestseller Katie Fforde'An irresistibleslice of escapism' Sunday Times Bestseller Phillipa Ashley

Kafka's gripping work of psychological horror, with an introduction and notes by Carolin DuttlingerA 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 Spectator Best Book of the Year<BR><BR>"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." <BR>-Michael Dirda, The Washington Post<BR><BR>A superb new translation of Kafka's classic stories, authoritatively annotated and beautifully illustrated.<BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.

Glück sei ihm nur beschieden, falls er 'die Welt ins Reine, Wahre, Unveränderliche heben kann', notierte Kafka 1917 in sein Tagebuch. Auch wenn er selbst sich mit seiner Erzählkunst an diesem Wunsch gescheitert sah - die ungeheure und anhaltende Wirkung seiner Prosa spricht für sich. Diese Schmuckausgabe mit Kupferprägung präsentiert alle zu Lebzeiten erschienenen Erzählungen des weltberühmten Prager Dichters sowie die von Max Brod aus dem Nachlass herausgegebenen Prosastücke, deren faszinierende poetische Kraft bis heute ungebrochen ist.- 'Die Verwandlung' und 77 weitere Erzählungen auf 608 Seiten- 'Ein Buch muss die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.' Franz Kafka- 'Junge Menschen bei Tiktok haben Franz Kafka für sich entdeckt. Einen Autor, der seit fast 100 Jahren tot ist, dessen Werk Weltliteratur ist, aber nicht gerade leicht zugänglich. Franz Kafka ist zum Schwarm der Generation Z geworden.' Stern 2023- 'Gen Z ist in Franz Kafka verknallt - und macht den Autor zum Tiktok-Star' Stern 2023Ausstattung: Surbalin Linea mit Schmuckprägung

Ein heißer Sommer im Prag der Fünfzigerjahre: Jana Honzlová, eine junge Sängerin in einem Folklore-Ensemble, darf nicht mit auf Tournee gehen, denn seit ihr Vater ins kapitalistische Ausland geflüchtet ist, gilt sie im kommunistischen System als politisch unzuverlässig. Stattdessen soll sie im Betriebsbüro die Stellung halten, wo sie ihr Leid mit der freundlichen Putzfrau teilt und heimlich internen Intrigen nachforscht. Aber auch ihre komplizierte Familiensituation hält die Ich-Erzählerin in Atem, die alles, was ihr widerfährt, mit Unverblümtheit und Straßenwitz schildert. Denn Jana Honzlová ist eine, die nicht so schnell aufgibt und sich ihre Chuzpe bewahrt. Umso erschütternder ist es für sie, als die Verhältnisse am Ende doch mächtiger erscheinen. Salivarová, die viele eigene Erfahrungen in den Roman einfließen ließ, erzählt gewissermaßen die Vorgeschichte des Prager Frühlings; dabei verzichtet sie auf Klischees oder Moralpredigten. Ihr gelingt das authentische Porträt einer vergangenen Zeit, das mit Leichtigkeit und Witz vorgetragen wird, ohne die Tragik und Absurdität auf die leichte Schulter zu nehmen. ¿Ein Sommer in Prag¿ (im Original: ¿Honzlová¿) erschien erstmals 1972 im kanadischen Exil und gehört für viele Kritiker*innen zum Besten, was in der tschechischen Literatur der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts geschrieben wurde. Nun liegt endlich die deutsche Erstausgabe vor.

Die tschechische Autorin Dora Kaprálová erforscht in Winterbuch der Liebe mit sprachlicher Leichtfüßigkeit und spielerischer Dreistheit die Beziehung zum anderen, der sich ihr überall im Leben zeigt. Sie schrieb es als literarische Reaktion auf Eine Frau des ungarischen Schriftstellers Peter Esterházy. Einen Winter lang verfasste sie jeden Tag eine Vignette über einen Mann, mit dem Gedanken daran, dass sich P.E. eines Tages an den Texten erfreuen würde. (Das tat er auch.) Es ist ein Buch über Männer, aber vielleicht auch nur über einen einzigen, facettenreichen und schwer fassbaren Mann, denn es geht um Liebe.Dass manchmal Ungeheuerlichkeiten zur Sprache kommen, tut der Autorin verständlicherweise sehr leid. Sie weiß, dass ohne sie einigen der kleinen Szenen die innere Wahrheit fehlen würde. Denn lebensspendende Energie kommt nicht nur vom gewöhnlichen Sex, sondern auch von einer überirdischen Sehnsucht. Das spüren auch die Rehe, wenn sie nach der Jagdsaison schweigend am Salz lecken.Freigeistig, flirtend, flirrend. Einfach ein großer Lesespaß.

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.<BR><BR> Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.<BR><BR>One morning, ordinary salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach. Metamorphosis, Kafka's masterpiece of unease and black humour, is one of the twentieth century's most influential works of fiction, and is accompanied here by two more classic stories.<BR><BR>'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

Selected by the preeminent Kafka biographer and scholar Reiner Stach and newly translated by the peerless Michael Hofmann, the seventy-four pieces gathered here have been lost to sight for decades and two of them have never been translated into English before. Some stories are several pages long; some run about a page; a handful are only a few lines long: all are marvels. Even the most fragmentary texts are revelations. These pieces were drawn from two large volumes of the S. Fischer Verlag edition Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente (totaling some 1100 pages)."Franz Kafka is the master of the literary fragment," as Stach comments in his afterword: "In no other European author does the proportion of completed and published works loom quite so...small in the overall mass of his papers, which consist largely of broken-off beginnings."   In fact, as Hofmann recently added: "'Finished' seems to me, in the context of Kafka, a dubious or ironic condition, anyway. The more finished, the less finished. The less finished, the more finished. Gregor Samsa's sister Grete getting up to stretch in the streetcar. What kind of an ending is that?! There's perhaps some distinction to be made between 'finished' and 'ended.' Everything continues to vibrate or unsettle, anyway. Reiner Stach points out that none of the three novels were 'completed.' Some pieces break off, or are concluded, or stop-it doesn't matter!-after two hundred pages, some after two lines. The gusto, the friendliness, the wit with which Kafka launches himself into these things is astonishing."

This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies; The Judgement, written in a single night of frenzied creativity; The Stoker, the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, and The Aeroplanes at Brescia, Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.

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.

From the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial and one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, his first—and funniest—novel.<BR><BR>Amerika tells the story of the young Karl Rossmann who, after an incident involving a housemaid, is banished by his parents to America. Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures.<BR><BR>Kafka began writing what he had entitled Der Verschollene (The Missing Person) in 1912 and wrote the last completed chapter in 1914. But it wasn’t until 1927, three years after his death, that Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and literary executor, edited the unfinished manuscript and published it as Amerika.

This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies; The Judgement, written in a single night of frenzied creativity; The Stoker, the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, The Aeroplanes at Brescia, Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.