The Castle (LIBRARY EDITION)

Product Description [Library Edition Audiobook CD format in sturdy Vinyl case with cloth sleeves that keep compact discs protected.] [Read by Ralph Cosham -aka- Geoffrey Howard] -- [Translated by Mark Harman] This new edition of Kafka's terrifying and comic masterpiece is the product of an international team of experts who used Kafka's original text and notes to render this story as close to the author's vision as possible. Kafka's final novel tells the haunting tale of a man's relentless struggle with authority in order to gain entrance to the Castle. The story of K -- the unwanted land surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle and yet cannot go home -- seems to depict, like a dream from the deepest recesses of consciousness, an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. A perpetual human condition lies at the heart of this labyrinthine world: dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, reason and nonsense, harmony and disintegration. -- An unfinished novel that feels strangely complete, The Castle uses absurd fantasy to reveal a profound truth. Review ''To read Kafka is always a surprising encounter. It shocks literary conventions and takes you with a jolt to the depths of the soul . . . The new translation by Harman restores Kafka to Kafka.'' --Los Angeles Times Book Review ''A necessary acquisition for anyone interested in Kafka.'' --Library Journal ''[A] major and long-awaited event in English-language publishing. [A] wonderful piece of news for all Kafka readers . . . (translator) Mark Harman is to be commended for his success in capturing the fresh, fluid, almost breathless style of Kafka's original manuscript.'' --Mark M. Anderson, Columbia University ''Sparkles with comedy, with zest, and with a fresh visual power . . . This is not just a new, brilliantly insightful, sensitive, and stylish translation, it is a new Castle, and it is a pleasure to read.'' --Christopher Middleton, University of Texas at Austin About the Author FRANZ KAFKA (1883-1924), one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century, was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague. His unique body of writing, much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously, is considered by some people to be among the most influential in Western literature, inspiring such writers as Albert Camus, Rex Warner, and Samuel Beckett.