The Stoker

"The Stoker" (original German: "Der Heizer") is a short story by Franz Kafka. Kafka wrote it as the first chapter of a novel that Max Brod titled Amerika and that has subsequently been translated as The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika) and as Amerika: The Missing Person, but Kafka abandoned the novel in 1913 and published the one completed chapter alone as a pamphlet later that year. Since his death, it has usually been published along with the uncompleted fragments of Amerika.