Amerika, Franz Kafka
Amerika, Franz Kafka
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Amerika
A New Translation by Mark Harman Based on the Restored Text

Author: Franz Kafka

Narrator: George Guidall

Unabridged: 9 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 02/10/2009

Categories: Fiction, Classic


Synopsis

A Brilliant new translation of the great writer’s least Kafkaesque novel, based on a German-language text that was produced by a team of international scholars and that is more faithful to Kafka’s original manuscript than anything we have had before.

With the same expert balance of precision and nuance that marked his translation of Kafka’s The Castle, the award-winning translator Mark Harman now restores the humor and particularity of language to Amerika. Here is the story of seventeen-year-old Karl Rossman, who, following a scandal involving a housemaid, is banished by his parents to America. With unquenchable optimism and in the company of two comic-sinister companions, he throws himself into misadventure after misadventure, eventually landing in Oklahoma, where a career in the theater beckons.

Like much of Kafka’s work, Amerika remained unfinished at the time of his death. Though we can never know how Kafka planned to end the novel, Mark Harman’s superb translation allows us to appreciate as closely as possible, what Kafka did commit to the page.

About Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century. His unique body of writing-much of which is incomplete and which was mainly published posthumously-is considered to be among the most influential in Western literature. Among his most well known stories are "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony," and his novels include The Trial and The Castle.


Reviews

This is a book that will remove our misconceptions that we can write a novel about an experience or a place only if we had a similar experience in the past. Kafka is a person who never visited America in his entire life. But he marvelously writes about the intricate details about America through......more

Goodreads review by Violet

Often I opt to know as little as possible about the novels I read before starting them which includes not reading the back cover synopsis. So I didn’t know this was an unfinished novel when I started. I hadn’t read any Kafka since my teens when I can’t say he was ever a favourite of mine. My feeling......more