The Sons

The Judgment, The Stoker, The Metamorphosis, and Letter to His Father

Look inside
$15.00 US
Knopf | Schocken
24 per carton
On sale Aug 05, 1989 | 978-0-8052-0886-3
Sales rights: World
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."
“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

About

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."

Praise

“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