(no subject)
Readers of Kafka should pay particular attention to the dates of the publications (whether German or translated) of his writing when choosing an edition to read. Following is a brief history to assist the reader in understanding the editions.
Kafka died before preparing (in some cases even finishing) some of his writings for publication. Therefore, the novels The Castle (which stopped mid-sentence and had ambiguity on content), The Trial (chapters were unnumbered and some were incomplete) and Amerika (Kafka's original title was The Man who Disappeared) were all prepared for publishing by Max Brod - Kafka's close friend. It appears Brod took a few liberties with the manuscript (moving chapters, changing the German and cleaning up the punctuation) and hence the original German text, that was not published, was altered. The editions by Brod are generally referred to as the Definitive Editions.
According to the publisher's note for The Castle (Schocken Books, 1998), Malcolm Pasley was able to get most of the Kafka's original handwritten work into the Oxford Bodleian Library in 1961. The text for The Trial was later acquired through auction and is stored at the German literary archives at Marbach, Germany (publisher's note, The Trial, Schocken Books, 1998).
Subsequently, a team reconstructed the German novels and S. Fischer Verlag republished them. Pasley was the editor for The Castle, published in 1982, and The Trial, published in 1990. Jost Schillemeit was the editor of The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika) published in 1983. These are all called the 'Critical Editions' or the 'Fischer Editions'. The German critical text of these, and Kafka's other works, may be found online at The Kafka Project.
Kafka died before preparing (in some cases even finishing) some of his writings for publication. Therefore, the novels The Castle (which stopped mid-sentence and had ambiguity on content), The Trial (chapters were unnumbered and some were incomplete) and Amerika (Kafka's original title was The Man who Disappeared) were all prepared for publishing by Max Brod - Kafka's close friend. It appears Brod took a few liberties with the manuscript (moving chapters, changing the German and cleaning up the punctuation) and hence the original German text, that was not published, was altered. The editions by Brod are generally referred to as the Definitive Editions.
According to the publisher's note for The Castle (Schocken Books, 1998), Malcolm Pasley was able to get most of the Kafka's original handwritten work into the Oxford Bodleian Library in 1961. The text for The Trial was later acquired through auction and is stored at the German literary archives at Marbach, Germany (publisher's note, The Trial, Schocken Books, 1998).
Subsequently, a team reconstructed the German novels and S. Fischer Verlag republished them. Pasley was the editor for The Castle, published in 1982, and The Trial, published in 1990. Jost Schillemeit was the editor of The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika) published in 1983. These are all called the 'Critical Editions' or the 'Fischer Editions'. The German critical text of these, and Kafka's other works, may be found online at The Kafka Project.