Great German Short Novels and Stories

The German short story or, as it is usually called, the Novelle, is one of the most impressive achievements of modern German literature. It is, perhaps, the only form which can claim a distinct tradition and which has produced a remarkably homogeneous body of excellence. From Goethe to Thomas Mann and Kafka, from the end of the eighteenth century to our own day no literary form – neither the drama nor the lyric nor, indeed, the novel itself – has attracted an equal number of first-rate German writers, and in no other area of the creative imagination is it so rewarding to trace the development of the form from an early pattern of anecdotal purpose to the subtle and intricate texture of our contemporary kind of narrative.