A masterful new translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most fantastical and visionary short fiction Animals, strange beasts, bureaucrats, businessmen, and nightmares populate this collection of stories by Franz Kafka. These matchless short works, all unpublished during Kafkas lifetime, range from the gleeful dialogue between a cat and a mouse in Little Fable to the absurd humor of Investigations of a Dog, from the elaborate waking nightmare of Building the Great Wall of China to the creeping unease of The Burrow, where a nameless creatures labyrinthine hiding place turns into a trap of fear and paranoia.