There is a lot of talk about Kafka and nightmares – and with good reason. However, his nightmares are never quite what you might expect - expectations are always a problem when reading Kafka, firsst they get in the way and then they get dashed. In Metamorphosis there is the ‘yuck’ factor of the main character becoming an insect – but that is hardly the ‘nightmare’ of that book. In The Trial the point is in being accused of something, but never being told what it is you have been accused of, but More...

„The Castle“ was the first book by Kafka I read. It was winter at that time and I had a fever, two aspects that certainly intensified this unique reading experience. The book puzzled me a lot back then and it kept me thinking and I tried to solve the mystery surrounding it.
Much has been said about the symbolism in the book; the castle and its complex system of clerks and competences, is often seen as a symbol of the horror of modern bureaucracy, K, the lonely antagonist, stands for the struggle More...

I feel like I've been reading this book for 6 months when in actual fact it has been just under a month and after much struggling and determination I just can't keep reading it anymore and yet a part of me wants to keep reading it even though it's a torment. I feel as though if I stop reading I'm letting myself down and missing something. Perhaps it's because I want to know what's so good about Kafka. Why do I always seem to hear Kafka praised and nothing badly said about his writing? I have no More...

In several conversations with Sarah Lawrence's best instructor I attempted to distinguish between what I then called "phrase-" and "sentence-level" virtuosity. I don't think I ever articulated the distinction very well. But midway through another Kafka novel, and having recently read Bernhard's Yes, I find myself thinking about this stuff again, and in the shower this morning I was struck by a much better way to frame the discussion:

In this case (and perhaps in only this case), I think it may ma More...

An extraordinary combination of beauty and subtle, paranoid horror - "growing inured to disappointment". Who else can make snow sinister (scary perhaps, but surely not sinister)? It ends in the middle of a sentence, more tantalisingly still, it ends with a mysterious old woman just about to say something... Very apt for a tale of layers of secrecy and never-ending frustration.

It can be interpreted as an allegory for Jewish alienation and/or as a semi-autobiographical rendition of his relationsh More...

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 Kaf More...

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 juxtapos More...

I'm a huge lover of Kafka but I was somewhat bored by most of this book, even though the general concept and backdrop is intriguing in its very Kafkaesque fashion. One must remember the book was not published, so unlike most literature, it suffers from the lack of polish that we would find had it been edited or intended for publication. The book is interesting enough for its originality, with the setting of an obscure and enigmatic village where the main character K has arrived on official busin More...

Reading Kafka's "The Castle" is like being trapped inside the head of a mental patient. It's irrational, stifling, claustrophobic, and filled with the sound of an unrelenting inner monologue that is helplessly compelled to analyze even the minutest occurrence for significance. The voice is ponderous, implacable and unremitting in its droning monotony. I almost agree with the author himself who requested the manuscript to be burned upon his death.

There was, however, one glimmer of an interesting More...

Kafka is a hell of a humorist, morbid as he is. The overarching irony in reading The Castle, is that we remain excluded from the castle. The characters that Kay (the protagonist) encounters are constantly supporting or denouncing one another, vying for plebian positions in the village of an unnamed, backwards European country. The rules of etiquette and means by which one gains distinction there are ever-changing.

Somewhere nearby looms the castle whose inner-workings are unclear and whose overa More...

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 th More...

While some great prose, I can understand some of the frustration with the progress of the story line (or lack thereof). Almost achingly slow at points, I took my own expectations of forward movement to mirror K.'s in regard to the castle. This is truly a tale of someone slowly losing battle after battle for their own self worth and status. The end of the first edition is certainly a downer, though to read on is less enlightening, as the writing takes on a different feel. Dialogue comes to a scre More...

This book presents an interesting concept of social power. There are those who want power and those with power. In this novel, K, is constantly struggling to reach this ideal, pie-in-the-sky dream of accessing the Castle which represents power. The politics involved to merely talk to the people who work for the castle is K's primary struggle throughout the book.

The constant politics of this book began to wear on me about halfway through the book. Perhaps if Kafka had the opportunity to finish th More...

When I was in college I loved Kafka.
I probably still do. This book, however, did not connect with me.
The beauty of being a fortysomething is that I do not have to finish every book I start. The truth is, that maybe, just maybe, my disdain for a canticle against bureaucracy is that it seems to strike too close to home. I have dreams that resemble Kafka. I have clients whose rules and regulations create more problems than they solve; and yet others who fear rules so much that they create nothing More...

There is something to be said about completed books. For one they've gone through an extensive revisions (the good ones) to trim the excess and entice the reader with premise and story.

Kafka never finished The Castle. He never fully edited the piece either. One is often thrown into endless and sometimes unnecessary monologues where a character frequently repeats the same message. I felt as if Kafka said much in this book about nothing.

K, the protagonist, arrives in a village with the task of p More...

When I was in college I loved Kafka.
I probably still do. This book, however, did not connect with me.
The beauty of being a fortysomething is that I do not have to finish every book I start. The truth is, that maybe, just maybe, my disdain for a canticle against bureaucracy is that it seems to strike too close to home. I have dreams that resemble Kafka. I have clients whose rules and regulations create more problems than they solve; and yet others who fear rules so much that they create nothing.

A More...

The fact that Kafka died before he resolved the plot made this novel more of a mystery to me. The plot is slow; a man enters a city and wishes to speak to the head of the castle, yet cannot seem to break through the bureaucracy to even get a foot in the door. Towards the end of the novel, he actually seems to be getting somewhere (although not through the proper channels) and it abruptly cuts off as it gets to the good stuff! I felt that the main character's struggles are so analagous the the ev More...

Tako je opet pošao dalje, ali to je bio dug put. Ulica, to jest ova glavna seoska ulica, nije vodila na brijeg, nego samo u blizinu brijega, a onda je kao namjerno vijugala i premda se nije udaljavala od dvorca, nije mu se ni približavala. K. je stalno očekivao da ulica skrene prema dvorcu i kako je to očekivao, išao je dalje. Očigledno, onako umoran on se nije usuđivao napustiti ulicu, a i čudio se dužini sela, koje kao da je bilo bez kraja, stalno iznova kućerci sa zaleđenim prozorskim oknima More...

The questions brought up by this book (according to a GR review) about how we construct reality and how we deal with the reality-constructs of others are among the most fascinating to me. The major thing holding me back would be the question of whether reading this first of his (a minor reading of 'metamorphosis' decades ago notwithstanding) would in some way 'harm' my reading experience.
Due to the rorshach aspect which so many refer to, I'll likely get from it something reflective of where I'm More...

Tireless, tiresome, and tired characters sleepily roam town trying to gain footing towards illusive Castle that may or may not effect every nuance of life. Rather baffling journey of the protagonist yields some lol absurdities at times. As these segue towards predictability, an eeriness takes over. I regret reading the prologue, so skip it if you have the opportunity and go in fresh. Foreignness, machiavellianism, illusion, absurdity. And the mixed virtue/folly of completely violating social dec More...

I started reading The Castle after finishing The Metamorphosis and The Trial. Although I could conclude reading these two, it was not the case with The Castle. The book was so hopeless (and endless), that I felt that I was drowning every time that I opened it. Therefore, I dropped it when I was about in the middle of the book.
I sincerely appreciate the value of this book and I admire Kafka's work. I got the point about the endless bureaucracy that can become a living hell. Nevertheless, there is More...

رواية عجيبة جدا.. فهي يمكن أن تفهم على أنها سطحية ومجرد سرد عبثي، وفي نفس الوقت يمكن فهمها بشكل عميق وببعد فلسفي خالص.. هذا يعتمد على كيفية قراءتك لها. فرانز كافكا كاتب له عالمه وتوجهه الخاص الذي يختلف عن كل شيء قرأته مسبقا.
قرأت النسخة العربية منها، وهي جديرة بالقراءة.. فرانز كافكا - القصر.

Gonna say America didn't really count, and this is my first Kafka?

So my chief discovery with this novel is that it's impossible to read it in a public setting without feeling like some kind of intellectual poseur. "Like, Kafka? Seriously?" I hid the cover from my surroundings in pubs, parks, public transport.

The novel is hugely uncomfortable and very funny. There are times when it entertaining to read, and times where it is an endless drudge. Which is entirely the point. I am okay with committin More...

Kafka is one of the most challenging authors to read. It is a tribute to his skills as a writer that one can sit and read his books, and be enthralled, although nothing ever happens in any of them. Kafka drags his reader through a world that makes no sense, and with each page as a reader your frustration and impatience grows at the circumstances the main character finds himself in. Yet, always even more annyoing is the main character's acceptance of playing by the absurd rules of the wacky socie More...

In his essay on Franz Kafka in the infinitely special Cultural Amnesia, Clive James recommends that, “The best way to approach Kafka is probably just to plunge into The Castle and get lost. Getting lost and staying lost is the whole idea of the book, and a matchless symbol for how, according to Kafka, we really feel underneath, when we momentarily convince ourselves that we know what’s going on, while still suspecting that the momentary conviction might be part of the deception.”

I took Clive’s a More...

The castle is again a marvellous product of the taverns of arcanity kafka had ventured into, as is reflected from the character who decides to fight something which he is unable to understand. The castle functions as a non-interpretable institution with unexplainable functions as it increasingly serves an apathetic and insensitive bureaucracy. It is a timeless classic and is still very applicable in today's time. The movie Brazil also went along similar lines exploring similar issues

This and Trial are extremely helpful in understanding social and work life. What's great about both of them is that you can never pin down them down to a particular allegory. You read and say, "Oh this is obviously about relating to God" and then that seems untrue, that it's about ambition and how modernity destroys the individual, and more interpretations emerge. Like fairy tales. Only problem is the paragraphs are so enormous I get squirmy.

Someone tell me if they know what this book is about...it's a great work for pondering...

"...it seemed to K. as if they had broken off all contact with him, but as if he were freer than ever and could wait as long as he wanted here in this place where he was generally not allowed, and as if he had fought for this freedom for himself in a manner nobody else could have done and as if nobody could touch him or drive him away, or even speak to him, yet - and this conviction was at least equally stro More...