Though most eBooks are simple conversions of paper books, "The eNotated A Country Doctor” is a completely new approach that takes advantage of ebook technology by providing eNotations (electronic annotations), essays, and background information conveniently accessible through links and a comprehensive table of contents. Written by Kafka and Goethe scholar and Wellesley College German professor, Jens Kruse, this background biographical, historical, and interpretive information makes Kafka’s simple-to-read but difficult-to-understand and puzzling European literature classic more accessible and the reading experience more satisfying.
Based on the Ian Johnston translation, this volume also includes 17 Kafka related images. A frame from Koji Yamamura’s award winning animated film “A Country Doctor” provides the cover art.This eNotated edition extends Kafka’s writing by providing a new layer of information behind the text, which the reader can access before, during, and after reading of “A Country Doctor.”
For instance, in the eNotations, Dr. Kruse, by highlighting the relevant passages in the texts, provides links to eNotations that point to the themes Kafka wove through story and its connection to his “Country Doctor” uncle and his other works. These notes, together with the other elements of this edition, enable and enrich the reader’s understanding of this story.
“A Country Doctor” is one of the most important European short literary works of the early 20th century - simultaneously compelling and confusing, seemingly otherworldly and yet saturated with its historical context. Dr. Kruse provides a framework that, while not solving the puzzle Kafka left us, makes it much clearer and richer.
Jens Kruse, born in Hamburg and educated in Germany and the United States has been studying and teaching Kafka for three decades and in this eNotated version of “A Country Doctor” shares with the reader what he has learned during that process - by adding extensive eNotations, an introduction, a bibliography, a chronology, and topical essays titled “Animals and Humans”, “Form”, “Mobility and Immobility”, Religion”, “Reversals”, and “Sexuality” - themes that run through Kafka’s haunting story.
If you are going to read Kafka for the first time - or reread him after some years - you will best enjoy and more effectively appreciate him with this unique eNotated edition. If you have not already done so you might also want to try Dr. Kruse’s editions of “The eNotated Metamorphosis” and “The eNotated In the Penal Colony.”
