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Title details for The Castle by Franz Kafka - Wait list

The Castle

by Franz Kafka
Allan Corduner
Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks

A land-surveyor, known only as K., arrives at a small village permanently covered in snow and dominated by a castle to which access seems permanently denied. K.'s attempts to discover why he has been called constantly run up against the peasant villagers, who are in thrall to the absurd bureaucracy that keeps the castle shut, and the rigid hierarchy of power among the self-serving bureaucrats themselves. But in this strange wilderness, there is passion, tenderness and considerable humour. Darkly bizarre, this complex book was the last novel by one of the 20th century's greatest and most influential writers.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 30, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781843794066
      • File size: 376442 KB
      • Duration: 13:04:15

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 1280
    • Text Difficulty: 10-12

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This novel-length parable by the brilliant master of existential angst Franz Kafka was published posthumously in 1926. Our hero, K. (pronounced "Kah" in this recording), enters a small village ready to assume duties as municipal surveyor. He finds that mysterious, bureaucratic, and willful denizens of the nearby castle exercise absolute and self-serving rule over the precincts, and choose to throw obstacle after obstacle in his path. At times humorous and always nightmarish, this unfinished existential parable, while already powerful on the page, gains additional potency from British actor-director Alan Corduner's spot-on narration. He treats the shocking and bizarre with matter-of-fact cool while breathing life into the dramatis personae. Through his efforts we feel K's humiliation and alienation, and it makes us shiver. Y.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 4, 2013
      Kafka never finished The Castle, his final novel. What he did complete is a vision of a relentlessly dystopian realm where people waste lives in service of a faceless, inhuman bureaucracy whose purpose is obscure, if indeed a purpose exists at all. Summoned to an isolated village, the land surveyor K. finds himself shunned by villagers and unable to contact his erstwhile employer, who is concealed within a forbidding castle. Seeking shelter in a hostile community, K. struggles to find some means to contact his employer, stymied at all turns by a society determined to remain subservient to an obstructive system of rules; progress appears to be foredoomed and escape is impossible. Mairowitz, who has previously adapted Kafka for the stage, does a masterful job of translating the work from its original language and formatting it into a comic book. Artist Jaromír 99’s dark and dreamlike art, detailed in some places, abstract in others, reflects the hallucinatory world of shadows and illusions K. wanders through. Too many graphic novel adaptations of classic literature just break down the stories into digestible panels; this is a powerful interpretation of Kafka’s timeless themes.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      George Guidall's reading is both disconcerting and comforting. Comforting, because he reads as Kafka surely wrote, with all the assurance and bravado that K, his protagonist, shows throughout. Disconcerting because, also like K, we haven't the slightest idea what is happening. As K wanders between the village and the inn, struggling to contact someone from the castle, neither he nor we can make sense of the difficulties he encounters. The listener, however, is swept along by the magic of the reader. "Guidall understands," we tell ourselves. He is in control, and, because he is, we can accept that we are not. The characters--Barnabas, the landlady, Frieda--dance in his vocal grip and become transparent vehicles of Kafka's sarcasm and humor. What fun. The Castle, like life, is as impenetrable as ever, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter. Guidall's reading is so faithful to Kafka that the book becomes less a puzzle than a mirror, illuminating the world around us. P.E.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1280
  • Text Difficulty:10-12

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