The Judgment

A Story (New Translation)

A young man finishes a letter to a friend living in Russia, puts it in his pocket, and crosses the hall to his father's room to mention his engagement. The conversation begins as nothing and ends as a judgment.

Kafka wrote this story in a single night in September 1912, at twenty-nine, and later called it the first thing he'd written that was truly his own.

The English translation follows Kafka's sentence structure closely. An afterword on Kafka's life gives context for first-time readers and for those returning after years.