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They are perhaps the most famous literary instructions never followed: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread...." Thankfully, Max Brod did not honor his friend Franz Kafka's final wishes. Instead, he did everything within his power to ensure that Kafka's work would find publication--including making some sweeping changes in the original texts. Until recently, the world has known only Brod's version of Kafka, with its altered punctuation, word order, and chapter divisions. Restoring much of what had previously been expunged, as well as the fluid, oral quality of Kafka's original German, Mark Harman's new translation of The Castle is a major literary event.
One of three unfinished novels left after Kafka's death, The Castle is in many ways the writer's most enduring and influential work. In Harman's muscular translation, Kafka's text seems more modern than ever, the words tumbling over one another, the sentences separated only by commas. Harman's version also ends the same way as Kafka's original manuscript--that is, in mid-sentence: "She held out her trembling hand to K. and had him sit down beside her, she spoke with great difficulty, it was difficult to understand her, but what she said--." For anyone used to reading Kafka in his artificially complete form, the effect is extraordinary; it is as if Kafka himself had just stepped from the room, leaving behind him a work whose resolution is the more haunting for being forever out of reach. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Upon his death in 1924, Kafka instructed his literary executor, Max Brod, to destroy all his manuscripts. Wisely refusing his friend's last wishes, Brod edited the uncompleted Castle, along with other unfinished works, ordering the fragments into a coherent whole, and had them published. Brod's interpretation of the work as a novel of personal salvation was accepted and strengthened by Willa and Edward Muir, who translated it into English in 1930. Recent scholarship, less willing to accept Brod's version, has led to a new critical edition of the novel, which was published in German in 1982 and which purports to be closer to Kafka's intentions. Harman's translation represents this edition's first appearance in English. Harman's stated goal as translator is to reproduce as closely as possible Kafka's style, which results in an English that is stranger and denser than the Muirs' elegant work. A necessary acquisition for anyone interested in Kafka.?Michael O'Pecko, Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Kafka, but not for the neophyte.,
By Go Sox (Boston) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Castle: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text (Paperback)
I would not buy this book if it were your first forray into the realm of Kafka. But the short stories first, then Amerika, then the trial, and then, if you could make it through the trial, try this read.The new translation is excellent (I've read both translations) and puts an even grimmer spin on life in the village of the castle. Please note: Kafka died before finishing the book and he never really prepared it for publication. There are sentences that run half a page, and paragaphs that run almost a whole chapter. The final page ends mid sentence. If you are a fan of Kafka then this book is a must read, especially if you read the Muir translation of The Castle.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nightmarish fare will haunt your dreams,
By
This review is from: The Castle: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text (Paperback)
I read somewhere that Kafka used to read the newly-written chapters of THE CASTLE to his friends who would laugh uproariously along with the author. I found this the scariest thing about the book, indeed one of the strongest clues that late 20th century America is immeasurably distant from early 20th century Austria-Hungary. This book will give you nightmares. It is nothing so childish as a Hollywood horror movie, but a somehow crumpled, twisted, horrifying view of human nature, especially as manifest in bureaucracies. K needs to speak to someone to get something done. He approaches the castle where the lord lives. The whole story involves his endless efforts to speak to someone, anyone, who can help him contact the servant who has the ear of the clerk who can speak to the courtier who might be able to talk to the cousin who occasionally is known to have the ear of the lord. And of course, K is continually frustrated. Not to mention you, the reader. It is the stuff of the worst nightmares. Thus, though it is extremely unpleasant,without any hint of beauty, love, or human feeling, THE CASTLE is a most powerful novel, one of the best I have ever read. I can't say I liked it, but it impressed me no end. If you have ever read anything else by Kafka and liked it, you will definitely like this one. It was never finished, but then such a novel can have no finish.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The public misconception of Kafka,
By
This review is from: The Castle: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text (Paperback)
Whenever asked who is my favorite writer, my response of Franz Kafka usually generates in the inquisitor a look of severity, as if I had responded with the most stifling and impenetrable answer imaginable. I have always been positively baffled by the public perception of Kafka as a "difficult" author, a "serious" author, one of those authors good for no one beyond college professors. This is simply not the case. All of three of Kafka's novels are thrilling, nightmarish, and haunting, to be sure, but they are also downright hysterical, containing countless moments of slapstick humor worthy of the great comics. Furthermore, Kafka's novels are probably the most compulsively readable of any I've ever read. I've yet to spend more than two days reading or re-reading one of the three novels, as once I'm drawn into Kafka's spell I have no choice but to finish (that previous statement obviously fits right in with Kafka's universe). I can't stand it when people consider Kafka "the guy who writes stories about people turning into bugs". The Castle is my favorite of Kafka's works, a novel so rich and beautiful, so full of crazy characters and imagination, it is the logical precursor to Roald Dahl and Tom Wolfe and Terry Southern and other writers of the comically absurd. Monty Python surely owes a huge debt to The Castle. The Castle is indescribable. There has never been another novel quite like it, before or after, and surely every reader will find it a different experience. It is a masterpiece in that it hints at serious post-modern themes and events, but remains ambiguous enough to take under its wing any number of interpretations. Great 20th century novels like Orwell's 1984 and Nabakov's Lolita probably won't stand up to future scrutiny the way Kafka's will, because Kafka is the only writer of the 20th century to succesfully represent the human experience through the form itself, letting the content and meaning transform entirely according to the reader.
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