Franz Kafka's final novel tells the haunting tale of a man known only as K. and of his relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain entrance to the Castle. Although Kafka seemed to consider "The Castle" a failure, critics, in wrestling with its enigmatic meaning, have recognized it as one of the great novels of our century.
Unfinished at Kafka's death in 1924, the manuscript of "The Castle" was edited for publication by Kafka's friend and literary executor, Max Brod. Both Brod's edition and the English-language translation of it that was prepared by Willa and Edwin Muir in 1930 have long been considered flawed.
This new edition of Kafka's terrifying and comic masterpiece is the product of an international team of experts who went back to Kafka's original manuscript and notes to create an edition that is as close as possible to the way the author left it. The "Times Literary Supplement" hailed their work, saying that it will "decisively alter our understanding of Kafka and render previous editions obsolete."
Mark Harman's brilliant translation closely follows the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, revealing levels of comedy, energy, and visual power that have not been previously accessible to
English-language readers.
W. H. Auden likened Kafka to Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe as the single most important writer of his age. Here, in this new edition, is a Kafka for the twenty-first century.
Franz Kafka's final novel tells the haunting tale of a man known only as K. and of his relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain entrance to the Castle. Although Kafka seemed to consider "The Castle" a failure, critics, in wrestling with its enigmatic meaning, have recognized it as one of the great novels of our century.
Unfinished at Kafka's death in 1924, the manuscript of "The Castle" was edited for publication by Kafka's friend and literary executor, Max Brod. Both Brod's edition and the English-language translation of it that was prepared by Willa and Edwin Muir in 1930 have long been considered flawed.
This new edition of Kafka's terrifying and comic masterpiece is the product of an international team of experts who went back to Kafka's original manuscript and notes to create an edition that is as close as possible to the way the author left it. The "Times Literary Supplement" hailed their work, saying that it will "decisively alter our understanding of Kafka and render previous editions obsolete."
Mark Harman's brilliant translation closely follows the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, revealing levels of comedy, energy, and visual power that have not been previously accessible to
English-language readers.
W. H. Auden likened Kafka to Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe as the single most important writer of his age. Here, in this new edition, is a Kafka for the twenty-first century.
The son of a well-to-do merchant, Franz Kafka was born in Prague in
1883 and died of tuberculosis in a sanitorium near Vienna in 1924.
After earning a law degree in 1906, he worked most of his adult
life at the Workers Accident Insurance Company for the Kingdom of
Bohemia in Prague. Only a small portion of his writings were
published during his lifetime; most of them, including the three
unfinished novels, Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle, were
published posthumously.
Mark Harman holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and has taught
German and Irish literature at Oberlin and Dartmouth. In addition
to writing scholarly essays on Kafka and other modern authors, he
has edited and co-translated Robert Walser Rediscovered: Stories,
Fairy-Tale Plays, and Critical Responses and has translated Soul of
the Age: Selected Letters of Hermann Hesse, 1891-1962. He teaches
literature at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Of all Kafka’s fiction this is the most personal. K. is not of course a mouthpiece for Kafka–he lacks Kafka’s grave intelligence and humor–but his inner conflict between a taste for ordinary life and the demands imposed by his quest were in good part shared by Kafka.... The Castle projects a greater strength of will than we have encountered in Kafka’s earlier writings–an effort to overcome the muteness of existence.” —from the Introduction by Irving Howe
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