Rating: 
Summary: The stuff of dreams and madness...
Review:
An enjoyable book.
Life... as seen in a dream, or during a lunatic episode, where anything becomes possible and everything becomes bizarre.
Marks: 5 out of 5
Rating: 
Summary: Essential Kafka -- but not as essential as "The Trial"
Review: "The Castle" is a typical work of Kafka. It features an enterprising, stubborn, white-collar protagonist facing insurmountable obstacles who lacks the introspection to see he is a playing a game he cannot win."The Castle" is about Joseph K., a Land Surveyor, who comes to the village under a reign of... well, not terror, perhaps bumbling indifference, by the imposing symbol of absurd beauracracy, The Castle. The Castle assigns inept assistants to Joseph, does not allow him to contact them, and worse yet, does not even give him a job, but tells him to "Keep up the good work." Along the way, Joseph makes the acquaintance of a mysteriously shunned family, takes on a fiancee who may or may not be all that she appears, and encounters a menagerie of cryptic, esoteric characters -- all of whom have their own ideas about the Castle and its vague, shadowy inhabitants. This is a pretty effective treatise on beauracracy and the frustration of the common person of working hard and getting ahead. But be forewarned: the ending is imminently unsatisfied. Also be certain to try and find a Max Brod translation if possible. The difference is very notable.
Rating:
Summary: The book was both humorous and well crafted.
Review: A humorous, yet haunting account of one man's search for salvation
Rating:
Summary: My favourite Book ever... Period
Review: A story where nothing happens, but everything does. Absurd, confounding but thoroughly worth the walk
Rating:
Summary: Una novela que resume la innata angustia del ser humano.
Review: Al leer esta novela, el lector sentirá esa sensación de desesperación caraterística de las obras de Kafka que representan de alguna manera la angustia que el ser humano siente por la ignorancia de su destino y fundamentalmente de su objetivo y del motivo por el que ha sido puesto sobre la tierra. Pocas obras han representado esta angustia tan común en todos nosotros, pero sin duda, ninguna ha penetrado en nosotros tanto como ésta.
Rating: 
Summary: Unsure. Is this how I'm supposed to feel?
Review: Being the last (and unfinished) work of the brilliant, but very bizarre writer Franz Kafka, this book weaves a strange tale of supposedly autobiographic search and discovery. It is difficult and anguishing to read this book, and I wonder if Kafka would have really wanted it published had he not died before finishing writing it. It feels like a long swim upstream in a cold river, which numbs the senses. But somehow you want to know what happens to the main character, K. Does he succeed in his plans? Is his success also subject to the laws of perception set up in this story? If you can make it through this one, you might have a greater appreciation for Kafka's other works, such as "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial" (and maybe all other books!). I have to say, his style is certainly unique, but I think I appreciated it much more in his other writings.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for Kafka fans...
Review: but somewhat disappointing for me. I'd saved this Kafka novel for last, having read all of his other fiction in the last couple of years. Up to this point, then, my favorite Kafka novel has to be The Trial, and my favorite short fiction is "The Great Wall of China," "The Burrow," "Investigations of a Dog", and "In the Penal Colony." Please be aware... the reason I didn't like this novel as much as I thought I would, could easily, for another reader, be exactly the reason to LOVE it. Yes, like his other works, this novel is a dark labyrinth with no beginning and end. All attempts at forward motion are thwarted by forces out of the protagonist's control. And, like his other works, this one is also quite hilarious at points (not to the extent of "Amerika," which was a more youthful work and more of a page - turner). The imagery in this novel mostly focusses on huge stacks of paper, either falling down in huge columns or being shoved under doors, bartered for jealously, keeping the characters occupied in endless tasks. I wanted this novel to be the be-all / end-all for me, and my three star rating may be more a reflection of my disappointment than of the work itself.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great literary nightmares of the past century
Review: Franz Kafka was obsessed with dreams, and THE CASTLE is his attempt to depict the modern world of corporate and governmental bureaucracy as a crazed nightmare. The novel possesses the logic of dreams, and there is a dreamlike quality to everything that happens in the book. As in a dream, people and situations transform effortlessly into something entirely different, as when one of the young, silly assistants of the protagonist K. suddenly appears to be a much older, decrepit man. Though his transformation is absurd, it is part and parcel of the logic of the village dominated by The Castle. I first read this novel years ago when the only option in translation was the Muir translation. This new complete translation, which includes a large section that Kafka's friend and literary executor Max Brod decided to excise, transforms the novel into an entirely different book. For one thing, the section that Brod left out indicates even more vividly the degree to which the novel is concerned with depicting the more horrific aspects of modern bureaucratic life. For another, the manner in which the text simply breaks off in mid-sentence reinforces the nightmarish quality of the book, for just as we wake up from a dream, never able to complete the tale, so we break away from the narrative, never knowing what K.'s fate is. The novel contains more a situation than a plot. K., a surveyor, arrives in a village having been hired by the local Castle, presumably to survey. Instead, K. quickly learns that he may not have been hired at all, and manages to break rapidly a number of laws of which he was utterly unaware and whose logic is far from obvious. In this way we see Kafka exploring one of the great themes of his literature: that all individuals are guilty until proven innocent, and that we have no idea what it means to be innocent. K.'s plight becomes more and more absurd and confused all the way until the point at which Kafka ceased working on the novel. That Kafka gave up working on the novel isn't completely surprising. His method of writing was to growth the text like one would a plant, not necessarily knowing where the story was going, but instead allowing it to develop as it wished. Unlike virtually every other great writer of the past two hundred years, Kafka was almost completely unconcerned with either character development or with plot. It wasn't that he was bad at character: it simply didn't concern him. He was far more interested in pure situations, as if they were thought experiments. For instance, what would happen if a man awoke one morning to find that he had been transformed into a giant beetle? Or, what would happen if someone were accused of a crime, but knew neither accuser, the crime of which he is being accused, or where his trial was to be held? Or, what would happen if a man showed up in a village to work as a surveyor, but discovered that he had neither a position nor means to contact those who had hired him? One reading this novel should keep in mind that Kafka spent his entire professional life working as a risk manager in an insurance company. He was acutely aware of the nature of corporate bureaucracy, and the myriad of silly rules and the amount of red tape inundating modern corporate and political life. Some tend towards a metaphysical reading of the novel, and while the book is not immune to such a reading, I think it can be better read on a more concrete social level. Kafka worked in an office his entire adult life, until his tuberculosis forced him to retire on what today would be workers' disability. He knew first hand the degrading, callous, and inhuman nature of the bureaucratic culture that was threatening to engulf modern urban living. Unfortunately, he did not, like K. in the novel, know how to escape the nightmare himself, or give us advice on how we could escape it ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great literary nightmares of the past century
Review: Franz Kafka was obsessed with dreams, and THE CASTLE is his attempt to depict the modern world of corporate and governmental bureaucracy as a crazed nightmare. The novel possesses the logic of dreams, and there is a dreamlike quality to everything that happens in the book. As in a dream, people and situations transform effortlessly into something entirely different, as when one of the young, silly assistants of the protagonist K. suddenly appears to be a much older, decrepit man. Though his transformation is absurd, it is part and parcel of the logic of the village dominated by The Castle. I first read this novel years ago when the only option in translation was the Muir translation. This new complete translation, which includes a large section that Kafka's friend and literary executor Max Brod decided to excise, transforms the novel into an entirely different book. For one thing, the section that Brod left out indicates even more vividly the degree to which the novel is concerned with depicting the more horrific aspects of modern bureaucratic life. For another, the manner in which the text simply breaks off in mid-sentence reinforces the nightmarish quality of the book, for just as we wake up from a dream, never able to complete the tale, so we break away from the narrative, never knowing what K.'s fate is. The novel contains more a situation than a plot. K., a surveyor, arrives in a village having been hired by the local Castle, presumably to survey. Instead, K. quickly learns that he may not have been hired at all, and manages to break rapidly a number of laws of which he was utterly unaware and whose logic is far from obvious. In this way we see Kafka exploring one of the great themes of his literature: that all individuals are guilty until proven innocent, and that we have no idea what it means to be innocent. K.'s plight becomes more and more absurd and confused all the way until the point at which Kafka ceased working on the novel. That Kafka gave up working on the novel isn't completely surprising. His method of writing was to growth the text like one would a plant, not necessarily knowing where the story was going, but instead allowing it to develop as it wished. Unlike virtually every other great writer of the past two hundred years, Kafka was almost completely unconcerned with either character development or with plot. It wasn't that he was bad at character: it simply didn't concern him. He was far more interested in pure situations, as if they were thought experiments. For instance, what would happen if a man awoke one morning to find that he had been transformed into a giant beetle? Or, what would happen if someone were accused of a crime, but knew neither accuser, the crime of which he is being accused, or where his trial was to be held? Or, what would happen if a man showed up in a village to work as a surveyor, but discovered that he had neither a position nor means to contact those who had hired him? One reading this novel should keep in mind that Kafka spent his entire professional life working as a risk manager in an insurance company. He was acutely aware of the nature of corporate bureaucracy, and the myriad of silly rules and the amount of red tape inundating modern corporate and political life. Some tend towards a metaphysical reading of the novel, and while the book is not immune to such a reading, I think it can be better read on a more concrete social level. Kafka worked in an office his entire adult life, until his tuberculosis forced him to retire on what today would be workers' disability. He knew first hand the degrading, callous, and inhuman nature of the bureaucratic culture that was threatening to engulf modern urban living. Unfortunately, he did not, like K. in the novel, know how to escape the nightmare himself, or give us advice on how we could escape it ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite
Review: Franz Kafka's The Castle is my favorite book. I first read it when I was young at a time when I also read America and The Trial. I enjoyed Mark Harman's excellent translation of the restored text in the autumn of 1999, and I am these days reading the first pages of Villy Sørensen's Danish translation, which to me may very well become the ultimate edition of The Castle. Pretty good for an unfinished work.
|
