THE ESSENTIAL KAFKA - WORDSWORTH CLASSICS
Translated and with an Introduction by John R. Williams
Like George Orwell, Franz Kafka has given his name to a world of nightmare, but in Kafka's world, it is never completely clear just what the nightmare is. The Trial, where the rules are hidden from even the highest officials, and if there is any help to be had, it will come from unexpected sources, is a chilling, blackly amusing tale that maintains, to the very end, a relentless atmosphere of disorientation. Superficially about bureaucracy, it is in the last resort a description of the absurdity of 'normal' human nature.
Still more enigmatic is The Castle. Is it an allegory of a quasi-feudal system giving way to a new freedom for the subject? The search by a central European Jew for acceptance into a dominant culture? A spiritual quest for grace or salvation? An individual's struggle between his sense of independence and his need for approval? Is it all of these things? And K? Is he opportunist, victim, or an outsider battling against elusive authority?
Finally, in his fables, Kafka deals in dark and quirkily humorous terms with the insoluble dilemmas of a world which offers no reassurance, and no reliable guidance to resolving our existential and emotional uncertainties and anxieties.
FRANZ KAFKA
Franz Kafka 1883 - 1924 is a Jewish Czechoslovakian who wrote in German, and who ranks among the twentieth-century's most acclaimed writers. His works evoke the bewildering oppressiveness of modern life, of anxiety and alienation in a world that is largely unfeeling and unfamiliar. Although most of his work was published posthumously, his body of work, including the novels 'The Trial' 1925 and 'The Castle' 1926 and the short stories including 'The Metamorphosis' 1915 and 'In the Penal Colony' 1914 , is now considered among the most original in Western literature.
Edad: adultos
KAFKA FRANZ
Franz Kafka es considerado uno de los autores más influyentes del siglo XX. Desarrolló su carrera literaria en alemán, ya que pertenecía a la minoría germanoparlante de Bohemia, en aquel tiempo todavía bajo el dominio del Imperio Austrohúngaro. En 1912 publicó la antología Contemplación y en 1915 vio la luz su obra más conocida, La transformación. Kafka enfermó de tuberculosis y escribió muchos de sus cuentos mientras permanecía convaleciente. Tras varias bodas sin consumarse y debido a su delicado estado de salud, decidió mudarse a Berlín para concentrarse en su obra. En 1924 su salud se agravó notablemente y falleció el 3 de junio de ese mismo año. La mayor parte de la obra de Kafka permanecía inédita en el momento de su muerte. Poco antes de morir le encargó a su mejor amigo, Max Brod, que destruyera una maleta donde estaban todos sus textos. Sin embargo, Brod decidió supervisar la publicación de su obra, que acabó por convertirse en un éxito internacional.
