Like George Orwell, Franz Kafka has given his name to a world of
nightmare, but in Kafka's world, it is never completely clear just what
the nightmare is. The Trial, where the rules are hidden from even the
highest officials, and if there is any help to be had, it will come from
unexpected sources, is a chilling, blackly amusing tale that maintains,
to the very end, a relentless atmosphere of disorientation.
Superficially about bureaucracy, it is in the last resort a description
of the absurdity of 'normal' human nature.
Still more
enigmatic is The Castle. Is it an allegory of a quasi-feudal system
giving way to a new freedom for the subject? The search by a central
European Jew for acceptance into a dominant culture? A spiritual quest
for grace or salvation? An individual's struggle between his sense of
independence and his need for approval? Is it all of these things? And
K? Is he opportunist, victim, or an outsider battling against elusive
authority?Finally, in his fables, Kafka deals in dark and quirkily
humorous terms with the insoluble dilemmas of a world which offers no
reassurance, and no reliable guidance to resolving our existential and
emotional uncertainties and anxieties.
The Essential Kafka : The Castle; The Trial; Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
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£2.50