Castle

Product Description

Kafkas final novel was written during 1922 when the tuberculosis that was to kill him was already at an advanced stage. Fragmentary & unfinished it perhaps never could have been finished; perhaps the tensions between K. the Castle & the village K.s struggle for acceptance or recognition by the mysterious Castle authorities or by the people of the village never will & never can be resolved. Like much of Kafkas work The Castle is enigmatic & polyvalent. Is it an allegory of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian Empire as it disintegrates into modern nation states or a quasi-feudal system giving way to a new freedom for the subject? Is it the search by a central European Jew for acceptance & integration into a dominant culture? Is it a spiritual quest for grace or salvation or an individuals struggle between his sense of independence & his need for approval? Is K. is an opportunist a victim or an outsider battling against an elusive authority? Is the Castle a benign source of authority or a whimsical system of control? Like K. the reader is presented with conflicting perspectives that rehearse the existential dilemmas & uncertainties of literary modernity.