The Sons (Schocken Kafka Library) [Deckle Edge] [Paperback]

Franz Kafka (Author)

Book Description

Series: Schocken Kafka Library | Publication Date: August 5, 1989

I have only one request," Kafka wrote to his publisher Kurt Wolff in 1913. "'The Stoker,' 'The Metamorphosis,' and 'The Judgment' belong together, both inwardly and outwardly. There is an obvious connection among the three, and, even more important, a secret one, for which reason I would be reluctant to forego the chance of having them published together in a book, which might be called The Sons."

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The world of the officials and the world of the fathers are the same to Kafka. The similarity does not redound to this world’s credit; it consists of dullness, decay, and dirt. Uncleanness is so much the attribute of officials that one could almost regard them as enormous parasites. In the same way the fathers in Kafka’s strange families batten on their sons, lying on top of them like enormous parasites.”
—Walter Benjamin

From the Inside Flap

I have only one request," Kafka wrote to his publisher Kurt Wolff in 1913. "'The Stoker,' 'The Metamorphosis,' and 'The Judgment' belong together, both inwardly and outwardly. There is an obvious connection among the three, and, even more important, a secret one, for which reason I would be reluctant to forego the chance of having them published together in a book, which might be called The Sons."

Seventy-five years later, Kafka's request is-granted, in a volume including these three classic stories of filial revolt as well as his own poignant "Letter to His Father," another "son story" located between fiction and autobiography. A devastating indictment of the modern family, The Sons represents Kafka's most concentrated literary achievement as well as the story of his own domestic tragedy.

Grouped together under this new title and in newly revised translations, these texts -- the like of which Kafka had never written before and (as he claimed at the end of his life) would never again equal -- take on fresh, compelling meaning.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Schocken (August 5, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805208860
• ISBN-13: 978-0805208863
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133,852 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tragic, fragmented portrait of a troubled relationship, June 6, 2010

By 

Dandylioness (Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Sons (Schocken Kafka Library) (Paperback)

At one point in his career, Kafka made a request of his publisher that three of his stories be published together in a single volume, citing "an obvious connection among the three, and, even more important, a secret one." The publisher did not honor this request in Kafka's lifetime, but Schocken Books has since made Kafka's envisioned volume a reality, including use of Kafka's suggested title: The Sons.

The first story is "The Judgment," where a dutiful son contentedly looks after his feeble, aged father and prepares for his wedding... until a bout of nearly incomprehensible guilt utterly alters the relationship and the son's plans. Next is "The Stoker," the short story that is also the first chapter in the unfinished novel Amerika. Here a rejected, homesick youth temporarily finds a replacement for the father he has left behind in Europe. Rounding out Kafka's trio is his famed piece "The Metamorphosis," where Gregor Samsa awakens to find he has transformed into a giant insect, a situation that he regards with a surreal and comical lack of amazement, but which causes great consternation for his dependent parents and sister. The stories are, of course, excellent. More tightly written and polished than the fragmentary novels Kafka left behind, they highlight Kafka's taste for absurdity in the midst of banality and his characteristic injection of sly humor into scenarios that are sad or nightmarish from the characters' perspectives.

The editors of The Sons included one final piece, a piece that was not in Kafka's request to his publisher. Indeed, this piece was among the personal papers that Kafka asked to have burned unread after his death. It is Kafka's "Letter to His Father." Written when Kafka was thirty-six years old, the lengthy letter endeavors to answer his father's question of "...why I maintain I am afraid of you." Stripped of the playfulness of Kafka's fiction, the letter is like a dash of cold water in the face - both painful and clarifying. Suddenly the bizarre behavior of the sons in the preceding stories, their ingratiating, slavish devotion to fathers who reward them with rejection, intimidation, and violence, becomes more comprehensible as one reads the naked railings of Kafka to the father he both admired and feared. I've seen this letter dismissed as being unrealistic: objectively, Hermann Kafka was not a violent monster. This misses the point. This is not an objective assessment of the complex relationship between a parent and child. This is the desperate plea for understanding from a wounded adult child, speaking bluntly and truthfully about his subjective experience of the relationship. It is the tragic story of a clash of personalities; of a timid, sensitive child overwhelmed by a vigorous, aggressive parent. That the parent was likely well-intentioned and never understood the injurious affect he had on his son does not change the son's experience. Even more tragically, the letter makes it clear that even at the age of thirty-six, Franz Kafka still on some level perceived himself as a scrawny little boy, disappearing in the shadow of his strong father. Speaking from my own personal experience, I will warn you that if you've had any similar issues with your own parents, reading this letter will likely activate some painful emotions, but it can also provide a sense of catharsis.

Any of the individual stories in this brief collection is a worthwhile read on its own. Together they pack a powerful punch. I do advise keeping the publisher's order and saving reading the "Letter" for after reading the fiction. Enjoy the stories and see what you get out of them. Then read the letter, and perhaps revisit the stories, and see if you have a new perspective on Kafka's multilayered literary creations.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Overbearing businessman father Herman anxious sensitive artist Franz, February 14, 2010

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Sons (Schocken Kafka Library) (Paperback)

The three stories and one long letter which constitute this volume center on the relationship between father and son. Father Hermann Kafka was a successful powerful businessman. Son Franz was an at times- sickly- tubercular supremely anxious sensitive- artistic son. The father intimidated, humiliated and made feel guilty the son. The son disappointed the father. The son however understood both the father and himself. And in the remarkable long- letter here, certainly one of the finest in world- literature, Franz unravels and understands this relationship as key to his own identity. He sees it as key to his failure to master adult life. The story ' The Judgment' is one of the most important in the Kafka canon. In one sense in the one long sitting in which Kafka created it he felt he had found himself as a writer. 'The Metamorphisis' that story of Gregor Samsa 's transformation from human to insect too exemplifies the theme of the son crushed within the walls of his own family home. No one ever wrote of anxiety and fear in the presence of a great inimimitable power with the beauty and lucidity of Kafka.
The father was on a small scale a 'big local businessman'. The son was on any scale one of the great literary creators of mankind. This work is evidence of that.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Letter to my Father, February 1, 2000

By 

Maria from London (London UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sons (Schocken Kafka Library) (Paperback)

A Letter to my Father by Franz Kafka is a look into the mind of one of the most talented (but also unhappy) writers of the 20th century. It's a very personal account of the relationship between Kafka & his father, his strong, controling, tough father who was the main figure who influenced Kafka's life & way of thinking. Franz Kafka talks with great pain in this 'letter' about his childhood years & how his father controlled everyone in the household, how the writer's own personality was shaped & molded by this one relationship. After reading this letter, the reader is closer to understanding the person that wrote "Metamorphosis" & "The Judgment".