Selection of stories in which Kafka's conception of punishment is reflected, as if it were his life.
The stories collected in this work, among which The Condemnation stands out, the beginning of Franz Kafka's stylistic maturity, reflect the Czech writer's conception of punishment, palpable both in his literature and in his life path. Reading it allows us to understand why Kafka needed to be a character in his writings: because his work was not gratuitous, but rather a written version, almost in fragments, of his own life, already aware of the not unfounded terror that "the diabolical powers" deserved. At the moment they only knocked on the door in Europe. In addition to The Condemnation, this volume includes the stories Before the Law, The Gracchus Hunter, A Knock on the Farmhouse Door, A Fratricide, Lawyers and In the Penal Kitchen.