Der Bau (Franz Kafka short story) Add a review

"The Burrow" (German: "Der Bau") is an unfinished short story by Franz Kafka written six months before his death. In the story a badger-like creature struggles to secure the labyrinthine burrow he has excavated as a home. The story was published posthumously in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer (Berlin, 1931) by Max Brod, Kafka's friend and literary executor. The first English translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, was published by Martin Secker in London in 1933. It appeared in The Great Wall of China. Stories and Reflections (New York City: Schocken Books, 1946).

Kafka is alleged to have written an ending to the story detailing a struggle with an invading beast, but this completed version was among the works destroyed by lover Dora Diamant following Kafka's death. Like "The Metamorphosis", "A Report to an Academy", "Investigations of a Dog" and "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk", "The Burrow" presents an anthropomorphic animal. Kafka worked frequently in this genre.