The Next Village is a short piece of writing by Franz Kafka. The entire text is reproduced at the top of this page. It was published in a collection called A Country Doctor in 1919. The translation that appears on this site is by Willa and Edwin Muir, and is from the Everyman’s Libray edition of Kafka’s Collected Stories, first published in 1946.

This website invites people to respond in some way to the text of The Next Village. Responses may take any form (or any form that can be posted here). The site exists for its own sake, as an experiment if you like, to see what arises out of an encounter with such a short but evocative text.

The website is run by Keith Ridgway. 

Comments are turned off by default on the contributions, but responses are welcome via the contact page.

If you would like to contribute then I’d like to hear from you.

Who is this Kafka bloke?

Franz Kafka was born in Prague, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic) in 1883. He worked for most of his life in insurance. He also wrote. He died in 1924 in Kierling near Vienna and is buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Žižkov. He’s best known for stories like The Metamorphosis (1915), The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1927).

There’s a decent Wikipedia entry about him, here.