"A Country Doctor" is a surrealist short story by the Bohemian (present-day Czech Republic) author Franz Kafka. It was originally published in German in the collection entitled Ein Landartz: Kleine Erzählungen in 1919. The story was later published in English in 1945, this time in a collection entitled The Country Doctor: A Collection of Fourteen Stories.
The story follows an unnamed country doctor who is called away in the middle of a cold winter night to assist a young patient who has fallen ill. At every juncture, the events and characters are not as they originally seem, and the doctor is forced through situations that don't make much logical or material sense. These elements are...
