In der Strafkolonie

In der Strafkolonie; In the Penal Colony (written 1914, published 1919) This is the most gruesome of all of Kafka’s stories. It contains graphic descriptions of a sadistic torture machine which is used in a French-speaking colony. One of Kafka’s uncles had worked in the (Belgian) Congo and had witnessed forced labour there. An unnamed officer demonstrates the apparatus to an unnamed vistor, with fatal consequences. The story can be read as a critique of European colonialism and of institutionalised violence.

Further Reading

Modernism/Modernity vol. 8, no. 2 (2001), Special Issue on ‘In The Penal Colony’

Tracey Dawe, ‘Kafka’s “The Penal Colony”: Reflections of German Colonialism and National Identity’, in Reflections: New Directions in Modern Languages and Cultures (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 129-43

Richard T. Gray, ‘Disjunctive Signs: Semiotics, Aesthetics, and Failed Mediation in “In der Strafkolonie”’, in A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, ed. by James Rolleston (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002), pp. 213-45

Jakob Lothe, 'The Narrative Beginning of Kafka's "In der Strafkolonie"', in Franz Kafka: Narration, Rhetoric, and Reading, ed. by Jakob Lothe, Beatrice Sandberg and Ronald Speirs (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2011), pp. 149-69

Roy Pascal, 'Kafka's "In der Strafkolonie": Narrative Structure and Interpretation', Oxford German Studies 11 (1980), 123-45

Roy Pascal, Kafka’s Narrators: A Study of his Stories and Sketches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 60-89 on 'In der Strafkolonie'

Michael P. Ryan, ‘The Aggregate Character in Kafka’s “In der Strafkolonie”’, Symposium 55 (2002), 213-27

Web Link in German

http://www.vorleser.net/kafka_strafkolonie/hoerbuch.html

Free audio download of In der Strafkolonie