The Collected Works of Franz Kafka

This very short story is Kafka's earliest known prose work, which he tells in a letter to his friend Oskar Pollack under the title "The Shamefaced Tall One and the Dishonest Man in His Heart" (original German "schamhaften Langen und vom Unredlichen in seinem Herzen"). The first English translations rendered the German "Shamefaced Lanky and Impure in Heart" yet this is not faithful to the original German. The story was only preserved because it was included in a letter Kafka sent to his friend Pollak on December 20, 1902. It is uncertain whether Kafka wrote the story directly for this letter or if it existed beforehand. The piece remained unpublished during Kafka's lifetime and was first published posthumously in 1958 as part of his letters in the work "Briefe 1902 to 1924" but was originally written by Kafka in 1902. The story describes an encounter between two characters: "Impure in Heart," a city dweller with a flamboyant personality, and "Shamefaced Lanky," a tall, reserved man who has retreated to a rural village to knit wool socks for the local farmers. "Impure in Heart" engages in an elaborate conversation with "Shamefaced Lanky," during which his words metaphorically transform into well dressed little men that crawl into Lanky's ears. He tells him a mix of stories, jabs at his belly with his cane, and leaves with a smile after finishing his monologue. Left alone, Lanky begins to weep, showing on the visitor's words and his own life. He questions the meaning of the encounter and his existence but eventually returns to his knitting (an obvious nod to Dickens). For The Shamefaced Tall One and the Dishonest Man in His Heart, this new, modern translation from the original German is a fresh, accessible and beautifully rendered text that brings to life Kafka's great literary work. The supporting apparatus for The Shamefaced Tall One and the Dishonest Man in His Heart comprises an afterword, a timeline of Kafka's life and works alongside of the historical events which shaped his art, and a short biography. This edition also contains the "The Silence of the Sirens" (original German "Das Schweigen der Sirenen" and "The Knock at the Manor Gate" (Der Schlag ans Hoftor), two vignettes found in his estate and published posthumously 1931, probably written around 1912