The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces is a collection of short stories and recollections 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...

, with additional writings by Max Brod

Max Brod

Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka...

. First published in 1948 by Schocken Books

Schocken Books

Schocken Books is a publishing company that was established in Berlin with a publishing office in Prague in 1931 by the Schocken Department Store owner Salman Schocken. It published the writings of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Kafka and S. Y...

, this volume includes all the works Kafka intended for publication, and published during his lifetime (the only exception in The Stoker

The Stoker

"The Stoker" is a short story by Franz Kafka. Kafka intended to include the story as the first chapter in a novel he did not complete; the novel was posthumously published under the title Amerika.-Plot :...

 which serves as a first chapter for the novel Amerika

Amerika (Kafka novel)

Amerika, also known as Der Verschollene or The Man Who Disappeared, is the incomplete first novel of author Franz Kafka, published posthumously in 1927...

). It also includes critical pieces by Kafka, "The First Long Train Journey" by Kafka and Brod, and an Epilogue by Brod. This collection was 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....

.

Kafka, Franz. The Penal Colony : Stories and Short Pieces New York: Schocken Books, 1948.

Contents

• Conversation with the Supplicant

a slightly different version from the text of the dialogue as it appears in the story Description of a Struggle

Description of a Struggle

"Description of a Struggle" is a short story by Franz Kafka.-Origins:"Description of a Struggle" is one of Kafka's earliest stories that was not destroyed and is usually the earliest included in collections of his work...

• Meditation
  Contemplation (Kafka)
  Contemplation, or Meditation is a sequence of eighteen short stories by Franz Kafka written between 1904 and 1912. Eight of these stories were published under the same title in the bimonthly Hyperion and were Kafka's first publication. Some of the stories are also included, in whole or in part, in...
  
  
  • Children on a Country Road
  • The Trees
  • Clothes
  • Excursion into the Mountains
  • Rejection
  • The Street Window
  • The Tradesman
  • Absent-minded Window-gazing
  • The Way Home
  • Passers-by
  • On the Tram
  • Reflections for Gentlemen-Jockeys
  • The Wish to be a Red Indian
  • Unhappiness
  • Bachelor's Ill Luck
  • Unmasking a Confidence Trickster
  • The Sudden Walk
  • Resolutions
• The Judgment
  The Judgment
  "The Judgment" is a short story written by Franz Kafka in 1912. It is about the relationship between a man and his father.-Plot summary:...
  
  
• The Metamorphosis
  The Metamorphosis
  The Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of short fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world...
  
  
• A Country Doctor
  • The New Advocate
    The New Advocate
    The New Advocate is a short story by Franz Kafka. It is a very brief piece, but bears importance because it illustrates Kafka's view on lawyers. A firm has hired a new associate, Bucephalos...
    
    
  • A Country Doctor
    A Country Doctor
    "A Country Doctor" is a short story written in 1919 by Franz Kafka. It is also the title of a collection of short stories, including this one.- Plot :The plot follows its eponym's hapless struggle to attend a sick young boy on a cold winter's night...
    
    
  • Up in the Gallery
    Up in the Gallery
    Up in the Gallery is a short piece of fiction by Franz Kafka.The piece contains a narrative where a circus performer is riding around in the middle of the rink...
    
    
  • An Old Manuscript
    An Old Manuscript
    "An Old Manuscript" , alternatively translated as "An Old Leaf", is a short story by Franz Kafka. It was originally written in 1919 in German.-Plot summary :...
    
    
  • Before the Law
    Before the Law
    "Before the Law" is a parable in the novel The Trial , by Franz Kafka. "Before the Law" was published in Kafka's lifetime, while The Trial was not published until after Kafka's death.-"Before the Law":...
    
    
  • Jackals and Arabs
    Jackals and Arabs
    "Jackals and Arabs" is a short story by Franz Kafka, written and published in 1917. The story was first published by Martin Buber in the German monthly Der Jude. It appeared again in a 1919 collection titled A Country Doctor .-Plot:A European traveler from the North, accompanied by Arab guides,...
    
    
  • A Visit to a Mine
    A Visit to a Mine
    A Visit to a Mine is a short story written by Franz Kafka. The story told by a narrator who works planning the drilling of a mine. It opens with orders from above to the workers around the mine. He details the elaborate rank and file system amongst the workers. There are ten engineers total, and...
    
    
  • The Next Village
    The Next Village
    "The Next Village" is a short story by Franz Kafka written between 1917 and 1923. The story presents a grandfather's comment that life is too short even to get to the neighbouring village.-References:...
    
    
  • An Imperial Message
  • The Cares of a Family Man
    The Cares of a Family Man
    "The Cares of a Family Man" is a short story by Franz Kafka which deals mostly with a small creature called Odradek. The creature has drawn the attention of many philosophers and literary critics, who have all attempted to interpret its meaning. The story was written between 1914 and 1917. In 1919...
    
    
  • Eleven Sons
    Eleven Sons
    Eleven Sons is a short story by Franz Kafka.The story begins with a father's declaration: "I have eleven sons." He then goes on to describe each one of them in detail. Kafka told Max Brod: "The eleven sons are quite simply eleven stories I am working on this very moment." The story was written...
    
    
  • A Fratricide
    A Fratricide
    "A Fratricide" is a short story by Franz Kafka written between December 1916 and January 1917. It is one of Kafka's most realistically descriptive and graphically violent stories which tells the story of a murderer, Schmar, and his victim, Wese...
    
    
  • A Dream
    A Dream (Kafka)
    A Dream is a short story by Franz Kafka. In the short piece, the narrator describes a dream, where Joseph K. is walking through a cemetery. There are tombstones around him, and the setting is the typical misty and dim atmosphere...
    
    
  • A Report to an Academy
    A Report to an Academy
    A Report to an Academy" is a short story by Franz Kafka, written and published in 1917. In the story, an ape named Red Peter, who has learned to behave like a human, presents to an academy the story of how he effected his transformation...
    
    
  • The Bucket Rider
    The Bucket Rider
    The Bucket Rider is a story fragment by Franz Kafka. Written in 1921, the story is about a man looking for coal to fill his bucket. He is a poor man and hopes that the coaldealer will be generous enough to loan him some coal. He claims he'll pay the man back later...
    
    
• In the Penal Colony
• 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...
  
  
  • First Sorrow
    First Sorrow
    "First Sorrow" is a short story by Franz Kafka probably written between the fall of 1921 and the spring of 1922. It appeared in Kurt Wolff Verlag's art periodical Genius, III no. 2 and in the Christmas 1923 supplement to the "Prager Presse"...
    
    
  • A Little Woman
    A Little Woman
    "A Little Woman" is a short story by Franz Kafka written between December 1923 and the end of January 1924. It was first published in the Easter supplement of Prager Tagblatt on 20 April 1924...
    
    
  • A Hunger Artist
    A Hunger Artist
    "A Hunger Artist" , also translated as "A Fasting Artist" and "A Starvation Artist", is a short story by Franz Kafka published in Die Neue Rundschau in 1922. The story was also included in the collection A Hunger Artist published by Verlag Die Schmiede soon after Kafka's death...
    
    
  • Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse Folk
    Josephine the Singer
    Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk is the last short story written by Franz Kafka. It primarily details a community and its relationship to a renowned singer named Josephine...
    
    
• Appendix
  • The First Long Train Journey - by Kafka and Brod
  • The Aeroplanes at Brescia
    The Aeroplanes At Brescia
    "The Aeroplanes At Brescia" is a short story by Franz Kafka published in the newspaper Bohemia in September 1909. It describes an airshow in the Italian town Brescia in which Kafka with two of his friends took part during their journey to Italy. It was the first description of aeroplanes in...
    
    
  • Three Critical Pieces
    • A Novel about Youth - Review of Felix Sternheim's Die Geschichte des jungen Oswald
    • On Kleist's "Anecdotes"
    • Hyperion - Review of the literary magazine
  • Epilogue by Max Brod