meh, put on pause due to lack of interest. I'm about halfway through and can tell that the plot is just endless frustration and social dillying. Not as good as The Trial. ( )

I read The Trial several years ago, and I remember that I struggled with it and did not enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoyed Kafka’s short works. So it was with some trepidation that I gave Kafka’s novels another chance with The Castle.

Happily, I found it surprisingly absorbing. The Castle begins as if in a dream. K. wanders into a village on a cold winter‘s evening, seeking a room for the night. He is quickly told that the authorities at the Castle do not allow strangers to pass the night. K. responds that he was summoned by the Castle; he is the new land surveyor. Is this true? Is it merely a ruse K. invents to secure shelter for the night? It does not matter. As in a dream, what K. says becomes, at least to K. himself, immediately true. Furthermore, taking up his position as land surveyor becomes a matter of prime importance and urgency. Yet he of course immediately encounters the chief problem of the Kafkaesque universe -- to reach the Castle he must navigate a system of rules that is as incomprehensible and senseless as it is uncompromising.

In the years since I last read Kafka, I had forgotten how bitingly funny he can be. The Castle is rich with satire and even slapstick-style comedy. Although this is often cited as an autobiographical work, Kafka allows little sympathy for his bewildered land surveyor. K.’s constant scheming, manipulations, and obsessive behavior are portrayed as ironically absurd and pathetic. Only in rare reflective moments could I feel the full impact of the tragedy of K.’s situation: that of the tenacious seeker left eternally in a dark, cold courtyard, hopefully waiting for an encounter that will never come.

This is not to say that I never found The Castle challenging to read. Kafka not only writes in long sentences, but he also writes paragraphs that can extend for many pages without a break. The tiresomeness and frustration of reading this style might add to the atmosphere of the novel, but it also makes voluntarily sticking with the book something of a test of will. The chore is not relieved by Kafka’s plain, unexciting prose. In the end though, I was glad that I finally took the time to read this funny, frustrating, and ultimately sad work, and I am sorry that Kafka never finished it. At some point in the future I might need to give The Trial a second try.

This review is based on the Harman translation of Kafka's unfinished work.

This book is at once quaint and tantalizingly modern. Our main character, K., arrives in an isolated town to work as a surveyor. As it turns out, his services are no longer required, and it soon becomes clear that the rules of the Castle controlling the town are very odd indeed. Read this comedic prose in a tale of misinformation, incompetence, and the inevitable results of bureaucracy gone wild. The way a phrase is turned communicates beautifully the constant confusion, clever covering, and hopeless one-upsmanship found in the town. The dialog is psychologically brilliant, and even such small details as punctuation and choice of paragraph breaks add to the effect. Imagining the horror and futility of such a situation, Kafka grants us the ability to laugh instead of tearing our hair out in disgust. My only complaint about this work is that it ends, mid-sentence, before we learn how it all turns out, but then again, the picture of the town is painted so clearly that we can imagine rather vividly just how the fates will end. A classic!

The main character wants a normal life — family, vocation — but stubbornly and vainly tries to suss out 'what makes everything work', never understanding that the machinery behind the workings of life aren't amenable to reason. That's what the book is about. It is not about 'bureaucracy'. I found it amusing.

Kafka's writing style is very challenging at points, droning on with long, highly punctuated sentences, and even longer paragraphs... sometimes spanning 10 pages. Somehow... its utterly annoying and totally engaging at the same time, very bizarre.

Overall, it's a pity the book was unfinished, cause I was finally starting to get into it. For those who don't know, the book literally ends in mid-sentence.

The main character K. speaks for Kafka's obvious hatred for bureaucracy and authority. Toward the end of the book, (who knows where that really is in relation to the story it intended to be) you start learning some interesting facts (purely opinions, because there are no facts in his world) that really shape the book and could change the way you look at the story, but unfortunately it was never expounded on... so one never knows where Kafka could had gone with this. ( )