Karl Rossmann is a teenager banished by his parents to America after a scandal with a maid. In New York, a wealthy uncle welcomes him, then throws him out. He drifts into a hotel job, joins two ne'er-do-wells, and eventually answers an advertisement from the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, which claims to have room for everyone. Kafka never finished it and never visited America, so the places are imagined.
Of his novels it is the most open-hearted and comic, and a good place to begin with Kafka. It is also a record of how a European saw the New World in the early twentieth century.
Deep, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Literary Connoisseur. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1927
- Language
- EN
