Contemplation (short story collection)

Contemplation

Betrachtung, first edition, 1912
Author	Franz Kafka
Original title	Betrachtung
Language	German
Genre	Short stories
Publisher	Rowohlt Verlag
Publication date	1912
Published in English	1958 (1958) New York, Schocken Books
Media type	Print (hardback)
Original text	Betrachtung at German Wikisource

Betrachtung (published in English as Meditation or Contemplation) is a collection of eighteen short stories by Franz Kafka written between 1904 and 1912. It was Kafka's first published book, printed at the end of 1912 (with the publication year given as "1913") in the Rowohlt Verlag on an initiative by Kurt Wolff.

Eight of these stories were published before under the title Betrachtungen ("Contemplations") in the bimonthly Hyperion.^[1] The collection Description of a Struggle, published in 1958, includes some of the stories In English, in whole or in part. All the stories appear in The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka (1971) and were published in a single volume edition by Twisted Spoon Press, illustrated by Fedele Spadafora. They have also been translated by Malcolm Pasley and are available in the Penguin Books edition, The Transformation and Other Stories (1992).

The book was printed in 800 editions and had in one year (1 July 1915 – 30 June 1916) sold 258 copies; it wasn't sold out until 1924, the year Kafka died.