About this title: Published posthumously, Kafka's novel--a major modernist/symbolist work--is about a surveyor, known only as K., who struggles with an absurd, implacable bureaucracy in an attempt to penetrate a dimly defined "castle." The characters in Kafka's allegory inhabit a strange world, comic and dreamlike, that has come to be known as "Kafkaesque."
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Second Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Schocken Books, New York
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780805204155ISBN:0805204156
Description: Good. No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" Tall. Good clean flat paperback with only light general wear. light edge rubbing. pages clean and unmarked. good clean copy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 1954
Description: Very good in good dust jacket. Seventh printing Book is very nice, no internal markings. D.j. has chips, tears, but mostly intact. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf, New York
Date Published: 1964 1964
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. printing 1976-, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: S Trade Paperback
Publisher: Penguin
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780140181081ISBN:0140181083
Description: Very Good. Aside from some light shelf wear and a bit of toning to the edges of its pages, this book appears as good as new. It's square, solid, tight and plausibly unread. It's free of any markings and sports a cover as lustrous as ever--you'll dance a fandango of fun once you receive this book! read more
Edition: Definitive ed.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780394719917ISBN:0394719913
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. A few instances of margin notes. Very light cover wear. Text in English, German. Glued binding. 471 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. 1987-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books, Vancouver, Washington, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780394719917ISBN:0394719913
Description: Good. No Dust Jacket as Issued. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Book shows moderate wear/ spine tight, pages clean/ covers creased; a few small tears and chips; moderate edge wear/ corners, spine hinge and spine creased/ readers slant/ several pages and page tips creased. read more
Description: With Homage by Thomas Mann. ILLUSTRATOR: None PUBLISHER: NY, Alfred A Knopf, 1968, 9th printing DESCRIPTION: Book is an 8" x 5 1/4" hard cover with blue cloth boards, light pink page tops, 20 preliminary pages, 481 pages CONDITION: Book is avery good, slight dusted page tops, some faint toning on the end pages at the hinges. DUST JACKET: dust jacket is good, triangle piece missing at the bottom front sunned spine and some tiny tears at the edges read more
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Text in German, English. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 481 p. Audience: General/trade. nice copy, clean and unworn read more
Description: Very Good. 0805204156 Great condition Soft Cover book, clean pages, mild creases to spine, light edge/corner rubs, this book is GREAT! Shop & Save With US. read more
"I originally read the Muir translation of The Castle years ago, and have just finished the recent one by Harman. I think I prefer the Muirs on a literary basis, and Harman's as to linearity and style. In both versions I cannot give a five-star rating, as, like all of Kafka's big three novels, they were unfinished when he died - indeed, The Castle ends in mid-sentence - and this flaw, this lack of resolution, cannot be overcome by editing regardless the number of times it is attempted.
Harman's translation delivers a grittier, more breathless version of Kafka's detailing of a surreal, bureaucratic nightmare. The characters speak more harshly, K. himself is somewhat more shifty and selfish, and the employees of the omnipresent Castle colder and less congenial. As always with Kafka, the sinister can intrude upon the banal in mid-sentence. Many authors have subsequently blended the dreamlike with the everyday, the bizarre with the ordinary - Auster, Ishiguro, Banks - but none can improve upon the master; fewer still can make formal speech appear so fluid and natural. He is also funny, in a dry and subtle manner, like the other great Austrian German writers of his time.
The story itself is fairly simple: K., a land surveyor, is summoned (allegedly) to the seat of the Count Westwest to perform his duties. Once there, facing a Castle and village that deny having requested him in the first place, K. must attempt to pierce the multi-layered, dizzying bureaucracy that stands between the protagonist and his ever-elusive goal, entry into the Castle itself. Scrounging up a few half-hearted allies, and a fiancée, out of an otherwise hostile village populace, K. tries to use reason to deal with the ever-changing methods and rules that are cast his way to impede his progress. Along the way, K. is faced with doubts as to the veracity of his point-of-view, and his motives, his truth, cast in a questionable light. Multi-page conversations ensue with the gentlemen, servants and villagers - devout believers in the imperfect "perfection" emanating from his crenellated nemesis.
This is an enigmatic work. It has been stated that Kafka was writing about the spiritual, with the Castle representing salvation, though Harman shies from this point of view in his introduction. I made notes myself, whilst reading, positing K. as God, perhaps the Devil, with the Castle and villagers representing a rational and obfuscatory modernity; or perhaps K. is an example of how truth and reality can depend upon its observers - K.'s version of reality differs noticeably from that of his interlocutors. As in Kafka's other works, there are many themes and meanings that can be read into his words.
One can only imagine the masterpiece Kafka might have been able to produce if his vision and drive hadn't stalled during its creation, the unfinished manuscript abandoned and never resumed before his death shortly after. As it stands, The Castle is still a fascinating and puzzling book, certainly well worth the readers time and effort."
"I read this book in order to keep a promise to one of my favorite professors of all time--it was required reading for a course I loved but I just didn't have a chance to get through it on top of all my other work. He said he would overlook it if I promised I would read it one day.
Now I have.
I can see how it fits into the course (Gnosticism) but other than that, this book was a major disappointment. The whole thing was...well, pointless. Maybe from an artsy perspective that was the intention but it wasn't even well-written pointless. The main character was a jackass to everyone in the village and was constantly correcting them. The villagers had so little spine and resolve that they immediately changed their minds after hearing him speak, even if they were dead-set against him to begin with.
Other people have suggested I read The Trial if I want to continue in this vein, although I'm not entirely sure I'm willing to give Kafka another chance."
"On the one hand, this is a book I cannot praise enough. I recommend that everyone who hasn't should read it immediately. It's one of those books that reminds you what fiction can be and can mean. It's the first book that I've read through twice in a row since Infinite Jest. On the other hand, I have to warn anyone who intends to read it that it's likely to drive you insane. The story makes your brain itch. If I had to describe it in one word I'd go with tantalizing. And that might be okay if Kafka had finished the thing. But it's only a fragment of what would have been a much larger entity, ending mid-story, mid-narrative, mid-sentence. You are left with the sense that it was heading somewhere life-altering, that all the intriguing seeds planted throughout were about to blossom simultaneously, but that you will never, ever get to see that harvest. I read it the second time in hopes of gleaning something more from the parts of the story that do exist, and I did pick up on several new subtle details, but that ultimately left me even more frustrated. In the end, I still think everyone should read it. But don't say I didn't warn you."
"I haven't read Kafka in a while, except for the Penal Colony story that I sometimes go back to, and I had almost forgotten what the experience is like. This book does not benefit much from paragraphs, though it is divided into many chapters. It has a strange yet delicate way of going about punctuation marks. And the beautifully composed dialogues are inseparable from the text, as they straddle conversation and inner voices of the characters.
I very much enjoyed the way Amalia's story is juxtaposed with that of Frieda, as both stories elegantly describe the intricate ways in which power/knowledge works within the village, and set contrasts to each other. I would like to read more about how Foucault has been influenced by Kafka, as this book serves almost as a case study for the definition of power that Foucault seeks to provide in his work. The ways in which Barnabas describes the offices, as having no clear boundaries, spaces in which you never know how much you know, how close you are to the center, etc, is fascinating. The Klamm character, setting up an unidentifiable, unknown Real, is also beautifully described, especially in the paragraphs where Olga pictures the transformations in his appearance depending on where he is, like an animal that makes every use of camouflage. Even when you see him, Olga says, you are never sure of what you have seen. And this is exactly what K. experiences when looking through the peep hole, at a man who seems to be working behind his desk with much paper work in front of him, only to find out that this is how officials sleep, for most of their days.
Accordingly, the way space and time operate within the novel is very dreamy, and intangible. K. spends around seven days in the village, and yet so much happens within these seven days, including an engagement, and a break-up. Although these seven days are marked by failed attempts, there is almost no idle time, rather the novel is infused with constant activity, which does not lead K. into the castle, but instead to the dark chambers of Gentleman's Inn. The space in which all this happens, is described to be a snowy village, where paths lead nowhere, and that is exactly what happens to K., as he becomes slowly immersed within the labyrinth of the village, at once declaring that he is to stay there for good. His occupation as a land surveyor further emphasizes the undecipherable spatial qualities of the village, which once again serve to conceal or at times manifest power relations within this unnamed place.
In reflecting on my own work, I very much enjoyed the below passage, as it clearly discloses the ways in which one has to persistently seek for further approval, further opportunities to have access, etc.
"Dealing directly with the authorities wasn't all that difficult, for no matter how well organized they were, they only had to defend distant and invisible causes on behalf of remote and invisible gentlemen, whereas he, K., was fighting for something vitally close, for himself, and what's more of his own free will, initially at least, for he was the assailant, and he was not struggling for himself on his own, there were also other forces, which he knew nothing of, but could believe in because of the measures adopted by the authorities. By mostly obliging him from the start in some of the more trivial matters -and no more had been at stake until now- the authorities were depriving him not only of the chance to gain a few easy little victories but also of the corresponding satisfaction and the resulting well-founded confidence for other, greater battles. Instead they let K. wander about as he wished, even if only in the village, spoiling and weakening him, barred all fighting here, and dispatched him to this extra-official, completely unclear, dull, and strange life."
On another note, it could be argued that this book is a beautiful ethnography, from an ethnographer who is trying to speak with people who are concealed behind multiple layers of professionalism."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
