The Castle (novel)

The Castle

First edition (1926)
Author	Franz Kafka
Original title	Das Schloss
Translator	see individual articles
Country	Czechoslovakia
Language	German
Genre	Philosophical fiction, dystopian novel, political fiction, comedy
Publisher	Munich
Publication date	1926

Das Schloß

Author	Franz Kafka, Malcolm Pasley
Country	Germany
Language	German
Genre	Philosophical novel, Dystopian
Publisher	Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag
Publication date	1982
Pages	416
ISBN

The Castle (German: Das Schloss German pronunciation: [das ʃlɔs]; also spelled Das Schloß) is a 1926 novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist known only as K. arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle. Kafka died before finishing the work, but suggested it would end with K. dying in the village, the castle notifying him on his death bed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there". Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.

Kafka began writing the novel on the evening of 27 January 1922, the day he arrived at the mountain resort of Spindlermühle (now in the Czech Republic). A picture taken of him upon his arrival shows him by a horse-drawn sleigh in the snow in a setting reminiscent of The Castle. Hence, the significance that the first few chapters of the handwritten manuscript were written in first person and at some point later changed by Kafka to a third person narrator, 'K.'

Kafka died before he could finish the novel, and it is questionable whether he intended to finish it if he had survived his tuberculosis. On separate occasions he told his friend Max Brod of two different conditions: K., the book's protagonist, would continue to reside and die in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there", but then on 11 September 1922 in a letter to Max Brod, he said he was giving up on the book and would never return to it. As it is, the book ends mid-sentence.

Although Brod was instructed by Kafka to destroy all his works on his death, he did not and set about publishing Kafka's writings. Das Schloss was originally published in German in 1926 by the publisher Joella Goodman of Munich. This edition sold far less than the 1500 copies that were printed. It was republished in 1935 by Schocken Verlag in Berlin, and in 1946 by Schocken Books of New York.