变形记：中短篇小说集

by Franz Kafka, 弗朗茨·卡夫卡 (Illustrator), 张荣昌 (Translator)

本书囊括了卡夫卡所有的中短篇小说，其中《变形记》|《在流放地》、《在法的大门前》、《饥饿的艺术家》、《乡村教师》等都是脍炙人口的名篇。它们均采用象征、隐喻、夸张等手法，情节生动，语言简洁流畅；故事怪诞离奇，无确定的时间和地点，无前因后果，给人以梦幻、神秘、奇特的感觉。作品的主人公几乎都处于一种身不由己的境地，他们在离奇古怪的世界中都有自己的目标，但往往又以失败而告终。

544 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 1, 2012

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 His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime.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

[wishbooksblessyou · Rating 3 out of 5]

皱着眉头看完了整本书
卡夫卡对人性的认知和思考是犀利而又深刻的

真的很心疼格雷高尔
他变成虫子之后的第一个想法居然是赶不上火车去上班了，被赶出门了还在不停的想父母该怎么办，还想要送妹妹去音乐学院，却唯独没有想过自己已经变成虫子了，未来该怎么办

从变形到死亡，人性的真实渐渐呈现

我们的存在如果阻碍了某些人的既得利益
无疑地肯定会被孤立被遗奔
就像格雷高尔因为变成昆虫而成为家人的累赘
家人之间的爱逐渐耗尽，只想尽早摆脱

我们的生活总是孤独的
没有利益交换后，人与人之间的冷漠便会立马显行

《变形记》的最后
曾经那样爱戴他的妹妹因他最终的死亡
而欢愉地张开手拥抱太阳
萨姆沙夫妇在此刻也只看到了妹妹阳光下美丽的容貌
思考着得尽快找个好女婿

这样的结局让人不寒而栗

但不得不说全文整体被没有很惊艳我
可能是翻译的问题？

[Estekke · Rating 5 out of 5]

masterpiece
最后附录的那封信，卡夫卡把想象父亲如何回答也写出来了，可是母亲却没有把那封信给父亲看

[Babibu · Rating 4 out of 5]

花了不到一下午的时间读完了，从开始的荒诞变得有迹可循，完完全全体会到了主人公的痛苦，全知视角只能是我更加责备所有出席的人物，看别人的书评说故事的结局其实是作者自毁倾向的表现、对父亲对描写更甚，其实是无力的反抗了

[Yujia · Rating 2 out of 5]

并没有完全读完，太多短篇了读不下去了，读了小一半，最后时间到了被图书馆收回了。我只能说，了解一下挺好，但是我是真的不喜欢比喻。如果有什么想说的，好好说不就好了，可以说的更明显一点吗？Animal Farm, the White Tiger都可以。很久以前读了他的the Stranger就并不喜欢。目前还是没缘分。