1915, ISBN: 74c81398275d61ea18a45e4035364066

Gebundene Ausgabe

[SC: 46.13], [PU: Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig], MODERN FIRSTS|BOOKS IN GERMAN, Jacket, Full Description: KAFKA, Franz. Die Verwandlung [The Metamorphosis]. Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, [191… Mehr…

[SC: 46.13], [PU: Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig], MODERN FIRSTS|BOOKS IN GERMAN, Jacket, Full Description: KAFKA, Franz. Die Verwandlung [The Metamorphosis]. Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, [1915]. First edition, wrappers issue. One of 1000 copies (according to the publisher). Octavo (8 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches; 215 x 135 mm.). [1-2], 3-72, [73], [1, blank], [5, ads], [1, blank] pp. Complete. With five pages of publisher's advertisements and on flaps and rear cover. Cream-colored illustrated dust jacket with folding flaps, front of dust jacket with Ottomar Starke's famous charcoal drawing of a man clutching his head in front of an open door (reminiscent of Edvard Munch's "The Scream"). Publisher's advertisements on dust jacket flaps and rear panel. Red wrappers. Fore-edge uncut. Some minor creasing to bottom of spine, and along edges. Light discoloration along edges as well. Top of spine with a small amount of chipping. Front red wrapper with the residue of a removed label. Very minor foxing to first three leaves. Page 10 with a small closed tear to inner margin, not affecting text. Overall, a very good copy of the very scarce first edition of Kafka's most famous novel. "Written between November 17 and December 7, 1912 during the fit of creative passion that also saw the birth of Das Urteil [The Judgement] and the first chapter of Der Verschollen (Der Heizer) [(The Stoker)].This ‘exceptionally repulsive story' is the most sustained work of fiction published during Kafka's lifetime and the one with which his name is most profoundly associated in the common consciousness: it is the story of Gregor Samsa's transformation into a giant insect. The strange allegory of alienationâ€"from the self, from one's very body, from the family, and by analogy from society, the state and the whole of mankindâ€"is one of the defining works of the twentieth-century consciousness. In his critical hierarchy of the great prose works of the Twentieth Century, Vladimir Nabokov rates Die Verwandlung second behind only James Joyce's Ulysses" (The Breon Mitchell Collection of the Works of Franz Kafka, p. 7). Dietz 25. Wronski, Kafka 12. HBS 68845. $6,750.<

1916, ISBN: 74c81398275d61ea18a45e4035364066

Taschenbuch

ABSURDISM. FRANZ KAFKA, KAFKAESQUE, METAMORPHOSIS, GREGOR SAMSA, GERMAN LITERATURE, WORLD LITERATURE, FIRST EDITION, THE PREFERRED ISSUE IN ILLUSTRATED WRAPPERS, OF ONE OF THE MASTERPIECE… Mehr…

ABSURDISM. FRANZ KAFKA, KAFKAESQUE, METAMORPHOSIS, GREGOR SAMSA, GERMAN LITERATURE, WORLD LITERATURE, FIRST EDITION, THE PREFERRED ISSUE IN ILLUSTRATED WRAPPERS, OF ONE OF THE MASTERPIECES OF WORLD LITERATURE. "On the evening of November 17, 1912, a young employee of the Workmen's Accident Insurance Agency, in Prague, sat down to work on a 'troubling little story' that had occurred to him 'in bed' the previous night. After spending the first part of the day in the office, he returned to the apartment he shared with his parents and thee sisters, had lunch, napped, took a walk, and then did a series of strengthening and stretching calisthenics. This was his daily ritual before settling in for the evening - and often far into the night - to what he considered his true life, a life dedicated to writing. Then, whether acting on a long-meditated plan or following an obscure, sudden intuition, he set down the words of the first hammerlike sentence of what would become his most famous story and one of the defining works of modern imaginative fiction, The Metamorphosis, or more simply, 'The Transformation': 'When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect.' Ever since, readers have been mesmerized, amused, puzzled, irritated, and unsettled by Gregor's life-changing transformation" (Mark M. Anderson, ed. The Metamorphosis). With the famous illustration by Ottomar Starke on the front wrapper. Kafka was adamant that the illustration not depict a bug, writing in a letter to the publishing house: "The insect itself must not be illustrated by a drawing. It cannot be shown at all, not even from a distance." The Metamorphosis was one of the few works published by Kafka in his lifetime. Leipzig: Kurt Wolff, 1915. Octavo, original illustrated wrappers (dated 1916 as usual) over red paper covers; custom cloth box. A little foxing to front wrapper; text exceptionally clean and fresh. An excellent copy of one of the cornerstones of Western literature.<

1916, ISBN: 74c81398275d61ea18a45e4035364066

Gebundene Ausgabe

[SC: 50.75], [PU: Kurt Wolff, Leipzig], FRANZ KAFKA FIRST EDITION,THE METAMORPHOSIS EDITION, Jacket, True first edition of one of Franz Kafka's most important works. Octavo, original wrap… Mehr…

[SC: 50.75], [PU: Kurt Wolff, Leipzig], FRANZ KAFKA FIRST EDITION,THE METAMORPHOSIS EDITION, Jacket, True first edition of one of Franz Kafka's most important works. Octavo, original wrappers. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket, rebacked. An exceptional example. The Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect. "While critics have interpreted this chilling story variously as a description of despair in a meaningless world, as a reaction to institutional authoritarianism, and as an expression of conflict between the author and his father, its power seems to rest in its resistance to explanation. W.H. Auden has said of it, 'Had one to name the author who comes nearest to bearing the same kind of relation to our age as Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe bore to theirs, Kafka would be the first one would think of" (New York Public Library's Books of the Century, 13).<