A Hunger-Artist

by Franz Kafka

144 pages, Paperback

Published April 17, 2025

About the author

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking writer from Prague whose work became one of the foundations of modern literature, even though he published only a small part of his writing during his lifetime. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka grew up amid German, Czech, and Jewish cultural influences that shaped his sense of displacement and linguistic precision. His difficult relationship with his authoritarian father left a lasting mark, fostering feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inadequacy that became central themes in his fiction and personal writings.
Kafka studied law at the German University in Prague, earning a doctorate in 1906. He chose law for practical reasons rather than personal inclination, a compromise that troubled him throughout his life. After university, he worked for several insurance institutions, most notably the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. His duties included assessing industrial accidents and drafting legal reports, work he carried out competently and responsibly. Nevertheless, Kafka regarded his professional life as an obstacle to his true vocation, and most of his writing was done at night or during periods of illness and leave. Kafka began publishing short prose pieces in his early adulthood, later collected in volumes such as Contemplation and A Country Doctor. These works attracted little attention at the time but already displayed the hallmarks of his mature style, including precise language, emotional restraint, and the application of calm logic to deeply unsettling situations. His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. They depict protagonists trapped within opaque systems of authority, facing accusations, rules, or hierarchies that remain unexplained and unreachable. Themes of alienation, guilt, bureaucracy, law, and punishment run throughout Kafka’s work. His characters often respond to absurd or terrifying circumstances with obedience or resignation, reflecting his own conflicted relationship with authority and obligation. Kafka’s prose avoids overt symbolism, yet his narratives function as powerful metaphors through structure, repetition, and tone. Ordinary environments gradually become nightmarish without losing their internal coherence. Kafka’s personal life was marked by emotional conflict, chronic self-doubt, and recurring illness. He formed intense but troubled romantic relationships, including engagements that he repeatedly broke off, fearing that marriage would interfere with his writing. His extensive correspondence and diaries reveal a relentless self-critic, deeply concerned with morality, spirituality, and the demands of artistic integrity. In his later years, Kafka’s health deteriorated due to tuberculosis, forcing him to withdraw from work and spend long periods in sanatoriums. Despite his illness, he continued writing when possible. He died young, leaving behind a large body of unpublished manuscripts. Before his death, he instructed his close friend Max Brod to destroy all of his remaining work. Brod ignored this request and instead edited and published Kafka’s novels, stories, and diaries, ensuring his posthumous reputation.
The publication of Kafka’s work after his death established him as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The term Kafkaesque entered common usage to describe situations marked by oppressive bureaucracy, absurd logic, and existential anxiety. His writing has been interpreted through existential, religious, psychological, and political perspectives, though Kafka himself resisted definitive meanings. His enduring power lies in his ability to articulate modern anxiety with clarity and restraint.

Reviews

[Liam Drebber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed all the stories compiled here, though some more than others, hence the four stars.
My personal favourites were “A Hunger-Artist” and “The Judgement A Story for F”.

[Lucka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will never get tired of Kafka's writing. I relate to his characters and his stories a bit too much.
Overall, I liked all of the stories, but Josefine, the Singer, or The Mouse People is my favourite one.

"Our lives are restless, every new day brings surprises with it, shocks, hopes and terrors, which the individual couldn't possibly bear, were it not that at all times of day and night he had the support of his comrades; and even so things are hard enough; sometimes a thousand shoulders tremble under a weight that was intended for one."

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this quote since I read it, I don't know why but it's stuck with me.

[Cillian van der Staak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was eigenlijk 'Can Socialists Be Happy? van George Orwell maar die staat hier niet op haha

[Jaron Shulver · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title story "A hunger artist" is very much so the best story in the book, a unique and interesting story about a self starving performance artist who struggles the reach the pinnacle of his craft.

The longest story in the book is The Stoker, which is an unfinished work. This is somewhat harder to read and contains many long run-on sentences but is nevertheless interesting for what it is, albeit closer to "traditional" fiction in tone than other Kafka works.

The other stories are all interesting in their own way although A Little Woman might be seen as problematic for its framing of a woman's dislike of a particular man from the man's point of view only. Although just as much seems to be about the anxiety of being disliked, or obsessing about whether one is disliked (even if this is a potential misreading by the narrator, as it's never explicitly spelled out by the woman in question) - nevertheless strange as in keeping with other stories by Kafka

[Marnie Glue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read a few pieces by Kafka now, I think it’s his writing style I’m not keen on. I thought I’d give this collection of short stories a go because I was drawn in by the books title, and though I’m glad I read it, it took me a lot longer than I’d expected, considering it’s so short. I really enjoyed “The Hunger Artist”, “The Judgement” and parts of “A Little Woman”… but I did have to skip “Josefine, the Singer, or The Mouse People” because I got half way through and was so confused by his tangents that I had no idea what the story was about.

I doubt I’ll read it again but if you like his writing it’s definitely worth a go.

[Luke Weaving · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collection of short stories:

First Sorrow:
Tormented by perfection

A Little Woman:
A perception of judgement without context

A Hunger Artist:
Not a performance but a showcase of alienation

Josefine, the Singer, or the Mouse People:
A demonstration of the importance of art

The Judgement:
Dogmatic conformity to perceived authoritative judgement

The Stoker:
Bureaucracy’s soft dismantling of opposition

[Beyza Eda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Hunger-Artist: Four Short-stories= show-stopping, spectacular, best thing I ve ever read. So it sets up quite a high bar for the other two stories. By all means The judgement and The Stoker are good stories, but not on the level of the compilation prior to them.

[Oscar Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me when I skip BREAKFAST

[Airam Avitok · Rating 4 out of 5]

This new series of Penguin Archive 2025 first published in Metamorphosis and other stories in Penguin Books 2007.

It consists of A Hunger Artist: Four stories
First Sorrow
A little woman
A hunger artist
Josefine, the singer, or the mouse people,
The Judgement A story for E. and
The Stoker : A Fragment.

This is my fourth Kafka book (Metamorphosis, the Trial, the Castle) and i must say i really enjoyed it.
I found the "Judgement" to have a Poe vibe and was unquestionably my favorite of all short stories in this book.
I also loved the strange "First Sorrow". it was so disturbing yet so true. Reality is indeed disturbing.
As for "the Stoker" it reminded me of the classical "kafka" circumstances and reminded me to continue with this writer and get to read all his other books i haven't read yet.
Beautiful cover and nice quality of paper.