"A Little Woman" is a short story by Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

 written between December 1923 and the end of January 1924. It was first published in the Easter supplement of Prager Tagblatt

Prager Tagblatt

The Prager Tagblatt was a German language newspaper published in Prague from 1876 to 1939. It was considered to be the most influential liberal-democratic German newspaper in Bohemia. It stopped publication after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia...

on 20 April 1924. During his final ilness Kafka corrected the proofs of the story for the inclusion into collection A Hunger Artist

A Hunger Artist (collection)

A Hunger Artist is the collection of short stories by Franz Kafka published in Germany in 1924, the last collection that Kafka himself prepared for the publication...

(Ein Hungerkünstler) published by Verlag Die Schmiede after his death.

Plot summary

The story begins with a detailed description of an anxious young woman. The woman is frustrated with the narrator for some reason which he cannot understand as they are strangers. The narrator contemplates the situation and wonders what will help the little woman with her obsessive frustration with him. He contemplates suicide as a possible solution but eventually decides to keep the issue concealed, aware that the woman will continue to live in rage. The reliability of the narrator is not a given, and sometimes there seems the suggestion that he is not the actual source of the woman's irritation, but merely considers himself to be so.

Process of writing

At the end of September 1923 Kafka moved to Berlin-Steglitz with Dora Dymant where he wrote "A Little Woman," based on their landlady.

Publication history (in English)

• 1943; translated by Francis C. Golffing, Accent, Summer 1943, pp. 223-227.
• 1948; translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
  Edwin Muir
  Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....
  
  , in The Penal Colony
  The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces
  The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces is a collection of short stories and recollections by Franz Kafka, with additional writings by Max Brod. First published in 1948 by Schocken Books, this volume includes all the works Kafka intended for publication, and published during his lifetime...
  
  , New York, Schocken Books, 320 p.