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The Castle cover art

The Castle

Written by: Franz Kafka
Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
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Publisher's Summary

This new edition of Kafka's terrifying and comic masterpiece is the product of an international team of experts who used Kafka's original text and notes to render this story as close to the author's vision as possible. Kafka's final novel tells the haunting tale of a man's relentless struggle with authority in order to gain entrance to the Castle.

The story of K - the unwanted land surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle and yet cannot go home - seems to depict, like a dream from the deepest recesses of consciousness, an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. A perpetual human condition lies at the heart of this labyrinthine world: dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, reason and nonsense, harmony and disintegration. An unfinished novel that feels strangely complete, The Castle uses absurd fantasy to reveal a profound truth.

©1998 Schocken Books, Inc. (P)1998 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What the critics say

"To read Kafka is always a surprising encounter. It shocks literary conventions and takes you with a jolt to the depths of the soul....The new translation by Harman restores Kafka to Kafka." ( Los Angeles Times Book Review)
"A necessary acquisition for anyone interested in Kafka." ( Library Journal)

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Fatalism

What a book for the current time period we find ourselves in. If one is forced to exist in a system that exists to put one down is it worth trying to fight it? What is the individual to do in such a situation? K first comes in as a outsider looking in, often flouting the contridictory rules of the village but in the end finds himself to accept the futility of trying to fight it. The scene that best shows this is the contrast of how K acts when he first arrives to the gentlemens inn to how he is so embarrsed when he breaks a strange rule about how non castle memebers are not allowed to stand in a certain corridor in the Inn near the end of the book. Put this into context of todays world, In America of course. The senate can pass a bill bailing out horse gambaling companies but cannot give the American people who are hurting stimulus checks. Sure give it in bussniess loans, all that is going to do is create skeletal small bussniess that will die out when the gov funding stops cause they wont have any customers because no one has any money! The system does not follow facts, in fact in todays world facts dont exist. The earth is flat and global warming is a chinese hoax, we can interpret facts all we want, everyone is entiled to their opinion, but an objective truth does exist. No matter how you feel, 2 + 2 will always = 4

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