A review by claireescott
The Great Wall of China and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

5.0

I spent the semester rationing this one out, reading one or two stories a week. The little stories are like candy-- funny, punchy, engaging. The aphorisms are sharp and incisive in twisting and nuanced ways, "Everything he does seems to him extraordinarily new, but at the same time, because of this unbelievable spate of novelty it seems extraordinarily amateurish, scarcely even tolerable, incapable of finding its place in history, breaking the chain of the generations, cutting off at its most profound source the music of the world for the first time, which before then could at least be divined. Sometimes in his arrogance he has more anxiety for the world than for himself."