The Castle (Oxford World's Classics)
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Product Description
Review
This novel-length parable by the brilliant master of existential angst Franz Kafka was published posthumously in 1926. Our hero, K. (pronounced 'Kah' in this recording), enters a small village ready to assume duties as municipal surveyor. He finds that the mysterious, bureaucratic, and wilful denizens of the nearby castle exercise absolute and self-serving rule over the precincts, and choose to throw obstacle after obstacle in his path. At times humorous and always nightmarish, this unfinished existential parable, while already powerful on the page, gains additional potency from British actor-director Allan Corduner's spot-on narration. He treats the shocking and bizarre with matter-of-fact cool while breathing life into the dramatis personae. Through his efforts we feel K's humiliation and alienation, and it makes us shiver. AudioFile Earphones Award Winner --AudioFile
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
Book Description
'He is the greatest German writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such novelists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him' Vladimir Nabokov
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
It was late evening when K. arrived. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
It was late evening when K. arrived. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is one of Kafka’s most impenetrable narrative constructs... a book that puts away with the stark storytelling and literary devises of the Trial and instead, broadens the more poetic aspects of the Metamorphosis - as well as drawing on his often fractured short story work - to create a surreal, allegorical parable that, in the words of another reviewer, offers everything and nothing simultaneously. The world of the novel in pure Kafka... with autocracy and bureaucracy pushed beyond their reasonable limits, infecting and affecting the characters in various ways and ultimately, creating an atmosphere of decay and paranoia that hangs constantly in the background, like a sick reminder of the character’s absurd futility.
It’s bleak stuff, made bleaker by the writer’s use of descriptions and choice of subject matter. His work is categorised as being without colour, and certainly this is true when we read his work back. The world that is conjured in our imagination is like a combination of Lynch’s Eraserhead, Gilliam’s Brazil and Soderbegh’s own film of the writer’s life and work (which saw actor Jeremy Irons portraying both Kafka and his literary alter ego K. in a stunning example of self-reflexity). We can actually see the world in which the writer abandons us - leaving us without guidance or clues for the most part of the book - as a noirish underworld populated by a cavalcade of characters, each with shadowy-ulterior motives.
The book takes in elements of black comedy and farce, which does, to an extent, lighten the mood... though the continual bombardment of surreal encounters, arcane descriptions and literary puzzles means that the humour is the last thing we respond to. As others have previously stated, this is a difficult book to get through on the first reading, requiring a great deal of concentration on the part of the reader to work through Kafka’s many multi-layered musings. Don’t despair however; this isn’t quite the bottomless pit that you might imagine it to be from my description. There is a great deal here to enjoy, it may just take a while for the writer’s world and characters to sink in. Needless to say, burgeoning Kafka fans will love it!
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Castle is more surreal and consequently more disturbing than Kafka's more famous novel, The Trial. The Castle appears to be an allegory for government bureaucracy and the law and in this respect will resonate with anybody that has dealt with government or a telephone company. It is a very dark story of a man's life of frustrations in the face of unrelentingly Byzantine bureaucracy.
This is my favourite Kafka novel and it is frustrating therefore that one must read it in translation, but mainly because Kafka never finished it, indeed it ends mid sentence. Kafka gave up on this book and it was Kafka's close friend Max Brod that completed it and to an extent commercialised it. But in a way, this chimes in with the unnerving narrative and is yet one more device to de-stabilise the reader.
Once read, The Castle will stay with you and you'll find yourself comparing much of what happens to you in modern life to the Sisyphus like existance of Joseph K.
This is my favourite Kafka novel and it is frustrating therefore that one must read it in translation, but mainly because Kafka never finished it, indeed it ends mid sentence. Kafka gave up on this book and it was Kafka's close friend Max Brod that completed it and to an extent commercialised it. But in a way, this chimes in with the unnerving narrative and is yet one more device to de-stabilise the reader.
Once read, The Castle will stay with you and you'll find yourself comparing much of what happens to you in modern life to the Sisyphus like existance of Joseph K.
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Kafka's best work. This book is deaply disturbing to read. In fact it is very difficult to read because, being brought up with traditional narratives, we find ourselves yearning for sense and structure. These always seem to be appearing, but are always ellusive. This book could never have been finished and the problems could never have been resolved. It offers everything and gives nothing.
I found that the book was a struggle, but that it gained more importance with further reflection and has stayed with me more than any other book I have read. Please read it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Castle
First off this is an excellent book, as you might expect given that it was written by, arguably, one of the most influential writers of the last 150 years. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Weird Fish
Bureaucratic bedlam
This book was my first encounter with Kafka and it won't be my last. From the off the narrative and dialogue seem as impenetrable as the legislature and social hierachy of the... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Simon Rennison
A classic novel
Ever got fed up filling in forms?
K's novel is engaging, frastrating, and hilarious all at once. Read more
K's novel is engaging, frastrating, and hilarious all at once. Read more
Published 13 months ago by ian
This is the Modern World!!
It either clicks or bypasses but the Castle is an allegory working on several lengths and is a dense sensorium. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles
an interminable nightmare
This book is as disturbing as it is boring: hundreds of pages of episodes in which the reader is unsure of what is really going on, all with a vivid and depressing dream-like... Read more
Published 13 months ago by rob crawford
Schloss Horror...
This is a terrific book; but you'll only appreciate it if you realise that the author is not trying to impress you and that you don't have to outguess him. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Sporus
Beneath the surface, shallow and uninspired.
The overall message of The Castle, it seems, is that bureaucracy is unbearable. K, the main character, spends the entirety of the novel attempting to get in contact with the... Read more
Published on 21 Jun 2009 by Christopher Fraser
A frustratingly pseudo-Kafkaesque review?
I came to read Kafka much later than I expected. And for reasons only half-known to myself I wrote my review even later. Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2008 by Here&Now
Emperor's new clothes denounced
The story doesn't amount to much: K arrives at a village having been offered employment as a Land Surveyor by the local castle. Read more
Published on 29 Jan 2007 by A. C. Dickens
"It's so hard to tell what's what, K."
In the era of New Labour doublespeak and the extension of the paraphernalia of the State at the expense of individual liberty, Kafka has never been more relevant. Read more
Published on 15 Oct 2005 by Sam Tyler
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