A traveller visits a penal colony, where an officer shows him a strange machine used to carry out executions. The device inscribes the prisoner's sentence on his body with needles over twelve hours, ending in death, and the officer reveres it, a relic of the old commandant's system. The traveller is asked to support the system with the new commandant, but he refuses to approve, and the officer's reaction takes the story to a grim end. Kafka wrote it in 1914 and published it in 1919.
It is a short, chilling story on justice and cruelty. Readers new to Kafka can start here, as it is direct and savage.
Deep, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Literary Connoisseur. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2006
- Publisher
- Suhrkamp BasisBibliothek
- ISBN
- 9783518188781
- Language
- DE
