Ein Landarzt
All Fourteen Stories, Original + English
Read Franz Kafka's collection Ein Landarzt in the original German beside a clear English translation, one sentence at a time — all fourteen pieces, complete. The doctor summoned across a snowbound country at night; the man who waits his whole life before the law; Odradek, the thing that lives in the stairwell; the ape who taught himself to be human and reports on it to an academy.
Every sentence is aligned German-to-English, so you always know exactly what you are reading. Tap any word for an instant definition, listen to natural audio in both languages, and follow the highlighted word alignment as the story is read aloud.
Kafka writes short, exact, unadorned sentences — the German is far more approachable than his reputation suggests, and most pieces here run to a page or two. "Vor dem Gesetz" is under six hundred words and is one of the most discussed passages in modern literature, which makes this an unusually rewarding way to read real German closely.
This reader is part of a growing collection of bilingual story apps that pair great writing with modern language-learning tools.
Source & attribution
Original text: “Ein Landarzt: Kleine Erzählungen” by Franz Kafka (1919). Public domain, via Project Gutenberg #21989.