Which Kafka novel do you recommend to read first?

Which Kafka novel do you recommend to read first?
Which one is the most dark?

The Castle is my favourite but his darkest works are probably In the Penal Colony or The Trial.

I was told most of his works are unfinished.
Do they just end abruptly?

Only read The Castle and The Trial from his novellas, The Castle does end abruptly, mid sentence even which is kind of annoying but The Trial feels semi-complete despite claims it is unfinished.

His short stories are all fine from what I can tell

In the Penal Colony was pretty dark, but I haven't them all yet so there might be something even more dark.

Is the complete stories worth getting?

Is air worth breathing?

The Trial has a proper ending since Kafka wrote the last chapter. By reading it you notice that's stuff clearly missing before the ending that he planned to write, but that really doesn't take that much away from the book as a whole. It still feels complete.

his short stories are his best works.

the one about the turk whose true nature shows itself is the dankest

He died before finishing the castle.

What darkness to you want? The short stories are a good entry point. A country doctor and the judgment and metamorphosis of course.

What
said goes for Amerika as well. He wrote the final chapter, but there are things missing that makes it seem like the penultimate chapter had yet to be written.

If it's dark you're looking for, short stories like The Vulture and A Fratricide are pretty good. Poseidon is among my favorites, but I think that's one that you should read after familiarizing yourself with his work.

Isn't Poseidon only a few sentences?

It´s a page and a half

metamorphosis to both

Okay as someone whose read every letter, story, word that Kafka's written we need to stop with this whole, he's such a morbid and dark writer, he isn't. In the Penal Colony is pretty gruesome, The Trial isn't dark I would say. A lot of times he's really sweet and satisfying in his short stories, "An Excursion into the Mountains", "Josephine the Singer", "A Crossbreed", "Wish to be a Red Indian".

They're all finished enough, it's really pedantic to obsess over the possibly unfinished nature of them. The Trial had a few deleted scenes that he planned to rewrite, Amerika has a pretty great ending but odd transitions but those don't really matter because it's picaresque anyway, The Castle you kind of want to end mid-sentence, a novel filled with 25 page monologues about people lying about their titles in a village only makes sense to lead up to an unfinished thought.

His novels are funny, and not always in that American brand of dark humor, they're insightful but not as satire as most people would say, there's not a hint of satire nor are they just commentary.

I once heard a speech by DFW about Kafka being rather humourous. Don't remember much of it, but it made sense to me.

Also, Kafka supposedly laughed quite loudly when he wrote late at night. His neighbours complained about that.

can confirm. DFW told this story in although you always end up becoming yourself. He says kafka often saw his own work as being much more comical than the press saw it

Well that's true in some regards, he did keep his neighbors up sometimes, he said he felt really fulfilled when he would finish one of his presumed darker stories like The Metamorphosis or In the Penal Colony. The only story I think that is deeply dark is In the Penal Colony, a story that he had difficulty reading in person and on the first time people left because they were so horrified before it was even halfway through.

But honestly barely any of Kafka's work is what could be considered "dark". Most of it is mythological and borders folk-tale (i.e. The Hunter Gracchus, Blumfeld, Song of the Sirens, Josephine the Singer, A Report to the Academy, The Village Schoolmaster, The Great Wall of China). Veeky Forums on the regular only talks about The Metamorphosis a lot, then sometimes The Trial (although people here often dumb it down into thinking that it's satire) and In the Penal Colony, a few have spoken about The Castle and almost no one reads his short stories outside of A Hunger Artist and The Judgement. People very rarely read his more impressive work but are really quick to judge. (I'm )

Wait for his animal stories until you've done most of his other work but they are certainly his best (A Report to the Academy, Josephine, Investigations of a Dug, The Burrow, etc.)

Underrated post

Der Bau is rather dark. But not in the "people die" dark way.

I would put it on the "darker" end of his work just because it's kind of a Dostoevskyian monologue about anxiety, but I would never tell someone it's a dark story.

As the other user said, it's roughly a page and a half.

To elaborate on what I said about the story in my earlier post, it seems to me that its effect is lost on, or at significantly reduced for, a reader unfamiliar with his themes dealing with bureaucracy and the like.

Also seconding what
>7959950
said.
I haven't read EVERY word we have of Kafka's yet, but probably about 75% of it and I agree with basically everything that user has to say. I don't think it's just odd transitions in Amerika, though, there are obviously entire scenes left out. There are bits in the final chapter that makes it clear there is a prior chapter missing. Still, I would agree it probably isn't anything that significantly diminishes the work.

ok then