Burrow

A superb new translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most frightening and visionary short fiction

Strange beasts, night terrors, absurd bureaucrats and sinister placesabound in this collection of stories by Franz Kafka. Some are less than apage long, others more substantial; all were unpublished in hislifetime. These matchless short works range from the gleeful miniaturehorror 'Little Fable' to the off-kilter humour of 'Investigations of aDog', and from the elaborate waking nightmare of 'Building the GreatWall of China' to the creeping unease of 'The Burrow', where a namelesscreature's labyrinthine hiding place turns into a trap of fear andparanoia.

Reviews

Hofmann, with his taste for mischief, makes Kafka, often translated in a buttoned-up key, a writer capable of blending old-fashioned literary parlance and contemporary media-speak... the modern touches also emphasise the timelessness of Kafka's themes, the horror of institutions being just one of them.