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• "A Report to an Academy" (1920) by Franz Kafka

  10 January by Franz Kafka

  An ape that has learned human ways reports to an assembly of scientists on the use or rather misuse that mankind had made of his talents.
  A moving and powerful account of his determined, obsessive striving to fundamentally change his essential condition and acquire a form of freedom in spite (...)

• "Candide" (1759) by Voltaire

  3 January by Voltaire

  Voltaire’s brilliant parody of the ideological notion that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds [1], ironically sub-titled "Optimism", that was written in three incredibly productive days(!) and has retained its charm, its venom and its Enlightenment message for mankind ever (...)

• "The Wonderful Story of Peter Schlemihl" (1814) by Adelbert von Chamisso

  27 December 2021 by Adelbert von Chamisso

  At the very beginning of this justly-famous story the young Peter Schlemihl becomes so alarmed by the amazing powers of a very strange man at a social gathering that he runs away, only to be pursued by the man in question, who insistently offers him an ever-renewable purse in exchange for his (...)

• "The Judgement (Das Urteil)" (1913), by Franz Kafka

  6 December 2021 by Franz Kafka

  A subtle shocker written in Kafka’s detached, almost otherworldly way, where a man-to-man conversation between a father and son brings out long-suppressed thoughts and attitudes and hitherto-hidden facts, and quasi-instantaneously triggers off a final catastrophic conclusion to what had (...)

• "The Marble Statue" (1819) by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

  1 November 2021 by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

  Florio is a young poet traveling through Italy who on coming to the ancient town of Lucca meets in rapid succession a boisterous fellow poet and singer, a beautiful young Greek maiden, a strange cavalier and a mysterious and somewhat evanescent lady who bears a strange resemblance to a lovely (...)