In his “Translator’s Notes” Thor Polson describes his role as that of an “arbitrary collaborator working figuratively with an absent author, living or dead” with the goal to “convey both the word and the spirit of the text”. In his translations of Kafka’s story collections A Country Doctor and A Hunger Artist, Polson has succeeded admirably in this role and with this goal. His translations give the reader an English text that reproduces Kafka’s German with remarkable accuracy and a clear sense of respect for Kafka’s words and sentences. In fact, it is at the level of the sentence, paragraph, and whole story that Polson’s achievement is perhaps most admirable. He succeeds at the difficult task of giving the English reader a sense of Kafka’s cadences, rhythms and narrative progression. By doing so, his translations go even beyond conveying “the word and the spirit” of the text: they convey, better than other translations of these stories that I am aware of, the full impact of Kafka’s art.

With an ear for both tone and authenticity of language, Thor Polson’s translation of the two collections A Country Doctor and A Hunger Artist further illuminates Kafka’s humor as one full of sadness, frustration, and irony. Whether it is the messenger in “A Message from the Emperor” who plays a game of Zeno’s Paradox and is never truly able to reach his destination, or the ape in “A Report for an Academy” who glibly forgives his oppressors in telling the story of how he came to resemble them, this translation — as suggested in the translator’s notes — exposes what I can only assume was at the heart of Kafka’s narrative intentions. I also believe that it is a worthwhile investment of anyone’s time to read all of Kafka’s work if only to arrive, at some point on that journey, at “A Hunger Artist”. Thor Polson’s translation of this beautiful story does not disappoint.

For Kafka research the information, texts and translations of Langer…provide information relevant to K.’s biography and the literary context of his writing … Langer, and the publication here of his poems and a reflective piece on K. published in Tel Aviv in 1941, are primarily significant as details which add to the increasingly important picture of the Jewish context of K.’s life and literary production.

Thor Polson’s translation manages to recreate the atmosphere of the Kafka texts, rendering them in clear and pleasantly fluent English, while at the same time staying very close to the original German wording. This translation will be useful to anyone looking for both a faithful and readable Kafka translation, and in particular to students of German in need of help with their own translations of the text.

The Wolffs have given us a rare gift: a view of Franz Kafka through the poetry and prose of Georg Mordechai Langer, one of Kafka’s most imaginative and unconventional friends. Those interested in Kafka – and I think by now this includes just about everyone who reads seriously – will find this book absorbing.

Thor Polson’s translations evoke a present-day voice for Kafka’s stories with a deliberate sensitivity that stays true to Kafka’s subtleties and nuances. Polson mediates a style of Kafka that, by the end of this volume, has become recognisable as Polson’s own. To a native German speaker and a student of German literature, both in German and in translation, Polson’s Kafka is eerily reminiscent of reading Kafka for the first time. A great feat for a translator of Kafka is to convey that particular, ephemeral currency of Kafka’s narrative, and something Polson achieves beautifully.

Polson translates Kafka with a sensitivity and insight faithful to this often enigmatic writer. Polson’s translation is not only accurate, but he has gone to great lengths to preserve the linguistic style of the original while at the same time presenting the text in an English version which is readable and which avoids the clumsiness and ambiguity so often found in translations of stylistically complex texts. The reader who is familiar with the German original of the Kafka texts will be pleased to recognize the work of the author in Polson’s English transformation.

Thor Polson’s long, cascading sentences vividly echo Kafka’s original flow, punctuated by an accumulation of events that alternates with pauses conveying the characters’ doomed attempts to escape the inexorability of their destiny.