The complete stories of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial. An important book valuable in itself and absolutely fascinating. The stories are dreamlike allegorical symbolic parabolic grotesque ritualistic nasty lucent extremely personal ghoulishly detached exquisitely comic numinous and prophetic. --The New York Times The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka s stories from the classic tales such as The Metamorphosis In the Penal Colony and A Hunger Artist to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod Kafka s literary executor released after Kafka s death. With the exception of his three novels the whole of Kafka s narrative work is included in this volume. [Kafka] spoke for millions in their new unease; a century after his birth he seems the last holy writer and the supreme fabulist of modern man s cosmic predicament. --from the Foreword by John Updike