The Castle
First English edition 1930 - With rare wraparound band
The Castle (Das Schloß, published posthumously 1926) is Franz Kafka's final novel, left unfinished at his death and published by Max Brod against Kafka's instructions. A man known only as K. arrives in a snowbound village and claims to be a land surveyor summoned by the authorities at the Castle above. Whether he was actually summoned is immediately uncertain. What follows is his sustained and entirely fruitless attempt to gain access to the Castle, clarify his appointment, and establish his right to be in the village at all.
The Muirs' translation of The Castle was the first of Kafka's works to appear in English, issued by Martin Secker in a single printing of roughly 500 to 1,000 copies. Rarely encountered in such condition, particularly with the scarce publisher's wraparound band.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo original blue cloth with title stamped in gold on front panel and spine. London: Martin Secker, 1930. #11381.
Near fine in original unclipped dust jacket (priced 7s.6d. net), with only slight wear to the extremities and an unusually bright, unfaded spine. Faint foxing to the text edges, otherwise clean and fresh internally, with many pages still unopened. Includes the elusive publisher’s printed wraparound band, lightly soiled and foxed, with a short closed tear to the rear flap fold.
The Muirs' translation of The Castle was the first of Kafka's works to appear in English, issued by Martin Secker in a single printing of roughly 500 to 1,000 copies. Rarely encountered in such condition, particularly with the scarce publisher's wraparound band.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo original blue cloth with title stamped in gold on front panel and spine. London: Martin Secker, 1930. #11381.
Near fine in original unclipped dust jacket (priced 7s.6d. net), with only slight wear to the extremities and an unusually bright, unfaded spine. Faint foxing to the text edges, otherwise clean and fresh internally, with many pages still unopened. Includes the elusive publisher’s printed wraparound band, lightly soiled and foxed, with a short closed tear to the rear flap fold.
Additional Details
The Castle begins with an ambiguity it never resolves. K. arrives in a village at night, says he is a land surveyor summoned by the Count, and is initially told no such summons exists. Then the Castle calls back to say there has been a mistake, and yes, a land surveyor was expected. K. takes this as confirmation of his legitimacy. The novel spends its remaining length demonstrating that this is not what it was.
The Castle itself is never entered. Its officials never appear directly. Communication with it occurs through intermediaries, through letters that arrive late and refer to situations that have already changed, through phone calls in which voices from the Castle speak over a background of humming that may or may not contain other voices, through assistants assigned to K. who are simultaneously his helpers and his overseers. The bureaucratic apparatus of the Castle is vast, internally inconsistent, and offers no answers when asked, each door seeming to open another.
K. wants two things: to do the work he was supposedly hired to do, and to have his position in the village formally recognized. He obtains neither. His pursuit of Klamm, the Castle official nominally responsible for his case, becomes the novel's central obsession. Klamm is glimpsed through a peephole, described by different characters in contradictory terms, and never directly accessible. The woman Frieda, who was Klamm's mistress and whom K. takes as his own, is the closest K. comes to any connection with Castle authority, and even this proves to be something he misunderstands from the beginning.
The village itself is organized entirely around the Castle's existence. Its residents never question its authority. They have internalized its logic so completely that to question it would be not only futile but incomprehensible. K. is the only character who insists on asking why, and this insistence marks him as an outsider in a more fundamental sense than his lack of papers. He wants legibility. The Castle does not offer it, and the village has long since stopped wanting it.
Kafka left the novel unfinished. According to Max Brod, Kafka described an ending in conversation in which K. would eventually receive word, as he lay dying of exhaustion, that his legal right to live in the village was not established but that, given certain circumstances, he would be permitted to remain. The permission would arrive too late to be useful, which is the only form of resolution the novel's logic could have permitted.
The Castle itself is never entered. Its officials never appear directly. Communication with it occurs through intermediaries, through letters that arrive late and refer to situations that have already changed, through phone calls in which voices from the Castle speak over a background of humming that may or may not contain other voices, through assistants assigned to K. who are simultaneously his helpers and his overseers. The bureaucratic apparatus of the Castle is vast, internally inconsistent, and offers no answers when asked, each door seeming to open another.
K. wants two things: to do the work he was supposedly hired to do, and to have his position in the village formally recognized. He obtains neither. His pursuit of Klamm, the Castle official nominally responsible for his case, becomes the novel's central obsession. Klamm is glimpsed through a peephole, described by different characters in contradictory terms, and never directly accessible. The woman Frieda, who was Klamm's mistress and whom K. takes as his own, is the closest K. comes to any connection with Castle authority, and even this proves to be something he misunderstands from the beginning.
The village itself is organized entirely around the Castle's existence. Its residents never question its authority. They have internalized its logic so completely that to question it would be not only futile but incomprehensible. K. is the only character who insists on asking why, and this insistence marks him as an outsider in a more fundamental sense than his lack of papers. He wants legibility. The Castle does not offer it, and the village has long since stopped wanting it.
Kafka left the novel unfinished. According to Max Brod, Kafka described an ending in conversation in which K. would eventually receive word, as he lay dying of exhaustion, that his legal right to live in the village was not established but that, given certain circumstances, he would be permitted to remain. The permission would arrive too late to be useful, which is the only form of resolution the novel's logic could have permitted.
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