The Truth About Sancho Panza by Franz Kafka

Talk about your SHORT stories! The Truth About Sancho Panza by Franz Kafka was first published in 1931, seven years after the author’s death. While classified by some as a short story, it is in fact what is known as a parable. In Spanish, a Sancho is a sidekick, while Panza refers to a man’s big belly. .

“Sancho Panza, who incidentally has never boasted of it, succeeded in the course of years, by providing a host of knight and robber novels in the evening and night hours to his devil, to whom he later gave the name Don Quixote, in diverting his devil from himself, that this then unrestrainedly performed the maddest deeds, but deeds that, lacking a predetermined object, which should have been Sancho Panza, harmed nobody. Sancho Panza, a freer man, serenely followed, perhaps out of a certain feeling of responsibility, Don Quixote on his processions and had thereof a great and useful entertainment unto his end.”

Published in Germany in 1931, the first English translation by Willa and Edwin Muir was published by Martin Secker in London in 1933. It appeared in The Great Wall of China, Stories and Reflections.

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Franz Kafka is renowned for his visionary and profoundly enigmatic stories that often present a grotesque vision of the world in which individuals burdened with guilt, isolation, and anxiety make a futile search for personal salvation.