I first read Kafka as a teenager and fell in love with his ideas. When I read him now it is the language that I love, the way he uses words with such precision. Reading him is like having a world built around you brick by brick (word by word) relentlessly until you are an inhabitant. Strangely, the experience is quite joyous, even when the subject matter is extremely dark and unsettling. It is the joy of being in the company of a completely liberated imagination. I could have chosen almost anything, but have gone for this slightly lesser-known story. Although we are never quite sure if we are reading about mouse-like people, or people-like mice, the story of the hold Josefine has on her downtrodden and fearful people, who otherwise have no understanding or appreciation of music (“when she is gone, music will disappear – perhaps for ever – from our lives”), is entrancing, terrifying, heartbreaking and hilarious all at once. Oh – and it breaks all the rules of short story writing.
First published as ‘Josefine, die Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse’ in Ein Hungerkünstler, Verlag Die Schmiede, 1924. Translation published in Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Penguin, 2007
A Personal Anthology 