Welcome to the shadows.

Old stories line the shelves of our dusty archives.

Stories of dreams, mystery, horror.

We would like to bring one of our early radio tales back to life during this half hour.

Hmm, let's see.

Ah, Franz Kafka, the judgment.

He wrote it, they say, in one sitting on the night of September 22nd, 1912, between 10 p.m. and 6 o'clock the next morning.

In it, he recreates his tyrannical father and himself in hopeless and deadly confrontation.

As in all of Kafka's work, it's a nightmare world.

But so real.

Let's listen. What can one right to be

What can one write to such a man?

Dear old friend, it's a Sunday morning in the middle of spring,

and I'm sitting in my room on the first floor.

As you know, our house is one of a row of houses,

each one hardly distinguishable from the others.

I've just finished a letter to you, and I'm looking out the window at the river.

Bridge, hills on the other side with their tender green.

Why did you run away to Russia?

Well, I was dissatisfied with my prospect at home, you know that?

Have things turned out better in St. Petersburg?

Oh, you know that too.

...