The Trial, the novel Kafka was working on in the same year that "In the Penal Colony" was written, concerns a man, Josef K., who is arrested, tried, convicted, and executed, though he never learns what his crime is.

Jewish Folk Tales (1989), selected and retold by Pinhas Sadeh, contains over two hundred stories which document the Jewish tradition of humor and magic in fiction

The Book of Lights by Chaim Potok (1981) is a contemporary novel which concerns the conflict between age-old secrets of Jewish mysticism and the new scientific horizon of nuclear physics.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) by Milan Kundera, a Czechoslovakian writer based in Prague during the 1960s and influenced by Kafka, concerns the hardships and limitations that can result from commitment and the meaningless of life without responsibility.

The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1982) contains stories...