"Kafka's 'legalese' is alchemically fused with a prose of great verve and intense readability." --James Rolleston, professor of Germanic languages and literatures, Duke University"Breon Mitchell's translation is an accomplishment of the highest order that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century."--Walter Abish, author of How German Is It

Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including "The Metamorphosis," "The Judgment," and "The Stoker." He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes. Breon Mitchell has received the ATA German Literary Prize, among other translation awards. He is a professor of Germanic studies and comparative literature at Indiana University.