Without Franz Kafka, known primarily for his novels "The Trial" and "The Castle," the literature of the 20th century would be different. Yet nowhere does he fulfill his own claim that a book must be "the axe for the frozen sea within us" more radically than in his stories. These are tales of fantastic precision, clear and enigmatic like daydreams, which one never forgets. The volume offers a chronological overview of Kafka's narrative work and contains his most important stories in a reliable text edition: "The Judgment," "The Metamorphosis," "Before the Law," "In the Penal Colony," "A Country Doctor," "Hunting Gracchus," "Jackals and Arabs," "Construction of the Chinese Wall," "A Report to an Academy," "The Silence of the Sirens," "First Sorrow," "A Hunger Artist," "The Burrow," and "Josefine, the Singer or the Mouse Folk." Contents: "The Judgment," "The Metamorphosis," "Before the Law.".