Franz Kafka, like George Orwell, has lent his own name to a world of nightmare – except that in Kafka’s case, what exactly constitutes the nightmare is never entirely clear. In The Trial, where even the highest officials have no access to the rules and any help that comes will arrive from the least expected quarter, a chilling, blackly amusing story sustains a relentless atmosphere of disorientation right to its close; ostensibly a tale of bureaucracy, it ultimately describes the absurdity lurking within ‘normal’ human nature. The Castle proves even harder to pin down. Is it an allegory of a quasi-feudal order yielding to a new freedom for the individual? A central European Jew’s search for acceptance within a dominant culture? A spiritual quest for grace or salvation? A struggle between independence and the need for approval? Perhaps it is all of these at once – and is K himself an opportunist, a victim, or simply an outsider battling an authority that keeps slipping from his grasp? In his fables, finally, Kafka treats in dark, quirkily humorous fashion the insoluble dilemmas of a world offering no reassurance and no dependable guide through our existential and emotional uncertainties and anxieties.
ISBN 13: 9781840227260
Author: Franz Kafka
