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 and uncertainties of literary modernity. 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 Jaw for acceptance and integration into a dominant culture? Is it a spiritual quest for grace or salvation, or an individual's struggle between his sense of independence and his need for approval? Is K.

Like much of Kafka's work, The Castle is enigmatic and polyvalent. Fragmentary and unfinished, it perhaps never could have been finished perhaps the tensions between K., the Castle and the village, K.'s struggle for acceptance or recognition by the mysterious Castle authorities or by the people of the village, never will and never can be resolved. The Castle (1966) by Franz Kafka, HC/DJ Definitive edition w/ intro by Thomas Mann and passages deleted by Kafka in the back - ex-library. The Castle by Franz Kafka 57,113 ratings, 3. English Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Kafka's final novel was written during 1922, when the tuberculosis that was to kill him was already at an advanced stage.

Translated, with an introduction by John Williams

The castle franz