This collection includes four of the seven books that Kafka published during — or just after — his lifetime. Even if Kafka’s three novels had remained unpublished, in keeping with his professed wish, his short fiction would have given him a secure place in the modernist canon. During his life they brought him, if not fame, at least the respect of many fellow-writers. Robert Musil invited him to write for the Neue Rundschau (New Review), the leading literary magazine in Germany, though Kafka was unable to accept the invitation; Rainer Maria Rilke attended the public reading of In the Penal Colony that Kafka gave in Munich, and revealed in conversation that he knew and admired Kafka’s previous stories. Kafka was not as obscure an author as is sometimes imagined.