The Great Wall of China (short story)
The Great Wall of China is a short story by Franz Kafka. Its original German title is Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer, which means At the Construction of the Great Wall of China.
Kafka wrote the story in 1917, but it was published after his death in 1930. The first publication appeared in the German literary magazine Der Morgen. A year later, 1931, it was included in Kafka’s first posthumous collection, Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer.
The story includes a parable called A Message from the Emperor (Eine kaiserliche Botschaft), which Kafka had published separately in 1919 in the collection Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor).
Themes in the story include why the wall is built in many small sections across different places, how the Chinese relate to the past and the present, and the emperor’s barely perceptible presence.
The tale is told in the first person by an older man from a southern province.
The first English translation was done by Willa and Edwin Muir and appeared in London in 1933, in The Great Wall of China. Stories and Reflections. A 1946 edition was published in New York by Schocken Books.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 20:27 (CET).