The Castle | Franz Kafka | 5 stars

[Idit]

Kafka never finished the novel. It just ends mid-sentance
But that's actually ok. It's not an adventure book that you need to get to the ending. I'm sure we missed out because it wasn't finished, but the book works amazingly well just the way it is.



I've never read any of Kafka's novels. I read metamorphosis, and another short story or two in highschool (The Hunger Artist is very strong in my memory). I expected The Castle to be as extreme and grim. But it wasn't. (or it wasn't just).
I've also realized how I've missed a good modernist art in my life.

At times hilarious, other times frustrating, touching, humane and so very well written.
It's the story of K. A land surveyor who was invited to work for the castle. He tries reaching it but can't get past the village, it's few inns and many characters – all ridicoulus and petty, each striving for some power.
In the way of all great beurochratic parody – there's a bit of a catch 22 there – You can only work and stay there if you get a permission from the castle, but you can't contact the castle to get that permission.
While trying to obtain permission to work, and later just to be part of the village, K. sneaks to places, deals with wierd assistants that he can't stand and work in strange jobs.

Each chapter is a new scene with new people or a new environment where he tries to move forward (and fails) and the setting are so theatrical and tactile – I could just imagine them

The story goes full gas in neutral – plans and counter-plans, explanations and counter-explanations. Everything is perfectly reasoned by one villager just to be totally contradict (sometime a paragraph later) so that it becomes meaningless. Kafka really was an amazing writer

Anyways... I thought the book was fascinating, and will hopefully read more of Kafka's work in the near(ish) future