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Title: Best Short Stories (Dual-Language) by Franz Kafka ISBN: 0-486-29561-3 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 April, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A must for students of German literature
Comment: This edition offers a sample of Kafka's best short stories with the original German and English translation on facing pages. It is a wonderful sort of "training wheels" for those who are ready to tackle German literature in the original.
The stories themselves are highly challenging. Kafka is regarded as a profit of modern alienation, but that doesn't capture the complexity of his thought. His masterpiece, The Metamorphosis, is here. In it Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find he has turned into a giant bug. With that simple, but startling device, Kafka has a vehicle for exploring the inner dynamic of a family, and the mix of selfishness and altruism which informs our relationships with one another. On the surface, it would seem that Kafka is affirming the increasingly common notion that all altruism is really disguised selfishness - yet the story's bleakness suggests that Kafka himself knows that the vision is incomplete. This is the truth, he says. But is it the whole truth?
In another great story, In the Penalty Colony, Kafka presents us with a society that was once ordered around a great torturing device. The society is in the process of moving away from the torture device, and that would seem to be a good thing. But Kafka is more challenging than that. Does a vision of the world which imagines no role for suffering really speak to our deepest selves? We are repulsed by the old order, but the new order seems to be missing something.
So in one neat package, you can learn some German and struggle with a challenging vision of the world. That's a bargain, in my book!
Rating: 4
Summary: Great for German Students
Comment: The most enjoyable aspect of language learning, for me, is the experience of reading literary masterpieces in the original. The side-by-side format is perfect for those intermediate students of German who would like something more substantial than the usual textbook fare. I would like to have seen more stories printed, or perhaps a second volume, but I do appreciate the variety available in this edition. The English translations tend to be more literal and wooden than the better all-English versions in print, but that is all the better. Once you've read Kafka in the original, you won't want to go back.
Rating: 5
Summary: Useful for students of both German and English
Comment: I have used this book at our university in a German class (Introduction to German Literature) and in a Literature in Translation class. Students appreciated the duel langauge format. For my students of German, the facing translation aids in setting the context so that they can deal mor quickly with the German text. I would recommend this book for those with some German who are interested in Kafka's short fiction. I would have liked having the " Hunger Artist" in the collection as well as a German vocabulary section (as one finds in other Dover texts), but otherwise I found the book most helpful. The entire series offers excellent books at wonderful prices!
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Title: Five Great German Short Stories (Dual-Language) by Stanley Appelbaum ISBN: 0486276198 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 27 July, 1993 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: German Short Stories 2/Deutsche Kurzgeschichten 2 (Penguin Parallel Text) by David Constantine ISBN: 0140041192 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Siddhartha (Dual-Language) by Hermann Hesse ISBN: 0486404374 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 26 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Death in Venice & A Man and His Dog : A Dual-Language Book by Stanley Appelbaum, Thomas Mann ISBN: 0486416003 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 05 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Great German Poems of the Romantic Era (Dual-Language) by Stanley Appelbaum ISBN: 0486284972 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 08 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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