These fourteen stories, published by Kafka in 1920, bring together visionary narratives whose protagonists--the doctor who comes to a patient's bedside on a stormy night, the craftsman whose town has been invaded by a fearsome nomadic tribe, the imperial messenger who will never reach his destination--are children of an age in which life has been handed over to an impenetrable logic and understanding the world is inconceivable. If these stories continue to capture us and exert, as Hannah Arendt noted, "a fascination so profound and enduring that suddenly some experience reveals its meaning" it is because, a century later, they still describe our time.
