The Castle

Author(s): Franz Kafka

Fiction

The Castle is the story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, and reason and nonsense, K.'s struggles in the absurd, labyrinthine world where he finds himself seem to reveal an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. Kafka began The Castle in 1922 and it was never finished, yet this, the last of his three great novels, draws fascinating conclusions that make it feel strangely complete.


Product Information

"The new Schocken edition of "The Castle" represents a major and long-awaited event in English-language publishing. It is a wonderful piece of news for all Kafka readers who, for more than half a century, have had to rely on flawed, superannuated editions. Mark Harman is to be commended for his success in capturing the fresh, fluid, almost breathless style of Kafka's original manuscript, which leaves the reader hanging in mid-sentence." --Mark M. Anderson, Columbia University ""The Castle, " published here for the first time in 1930, was the first Kafka to arrive in America. After the war, Hannah Arendt remarked that The Castle might finally be comprehensible to the generation of the forties, who had had the occasion to watch their world become Kafkaesque. What will the generation of the nineties make of "The Castle, " now that its full message has arrived? Here is the masterpiece behind the masterpiece."--Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Haverford College "Sparkles with comedy, with zest, and with a fresh visual power, which in the Muir translation were indistinct or lost. This is not just a new, brilliantly insightful, sensitive, and stylish translation, it is a new "Castle, " and it is a pleasure to read."--Christopher Middleton, University of Texas at Austin "This is the closest to Kafka's original novel and intention that any translation could get, and what is more, it is eminently readable. With this exceptional translation, the time for a new Kafka in English has finally come." --Egon Schwartz, Washington University, St. Louis

General Fields

  • : 9780241197806
  • : Penguin Books, Limited
  • : Penguin Books, Limited
  • : 0.236
  • : December 2015
  • : 198mm X 129mm X 18mm
  • : December 2015
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 320
  • : 1512
  • : Paperback
  • : Franz Kafka