Thorn is the author of Tennyson (1993), a biography of the English poet, and a reviewer for the Times Educational Supplement. In the following essay, he examines "In the Penal Colony" and asserts that "first and foremost the story is a dream or a parable."

For most of his life as a writer Kafka was employed at a workers' accident insurance company He wrote at night, on weekends, and on the holidays. It was a routine which made the writing of a novel an arduous business. He did not enjoy writing novels. Indeed, he never succeeded in finishing one. But he did enjoy writing short stories. In 1912 he confided to his diary, having just completed a story called "The Judgment" in a single sitting, writing from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning: "with my novel-writing I am in the shameful lowlands of writing. Only...