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
A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)
No other writer of German-language literature in the 20th century has been as fully accepted into the canon of world literature as Franz Kafka. The unsettlingly, enigmatically surreal world depicted in Kafka's novels and stories continues to fascinate readers and critics of each new generation, who in turn continue to find new readings. One thing has become wholly clear: although all theories attempt to appropriate Kafka, there is no one key to his work.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Audiobook)by Franz Kafka
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.
Having died a month short of his 40th birthday, Franz Kafka is seen by some critics as having been on the threshold of a greater art than he had displayed earlier in his career. Examined in this text are Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," "The Judgement," "In the Penal Colony," "A Hunger Artist," and "Josephine the Singer and the Mousefolk."
The Man Without Qualities (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)
Ulrich has no qualities in the sense that his self-awareness is completely divorced from his abilities. He is drawn into a project, the "Parallel Campaign", to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph's coronation in 1918.
