The Man Who Disappeared

Franz Kafka
Translated and Edited by Ritchie Robertson

Oxford World's Classics

• A new translation of Kafka's first novel, a biting and blackly humorous satire on a richly imagined America which gives fresh meaning to the term 'Kafkaesque'.
• Ritchie Robertson's translation is both faithful to Kafka's style and highly readable.
• The only edition to provide a full introduction and explanatory notes. The introduction explains why Kafka set the novel in America, a country he had never visited, what his sources of information were, how he distorts his fictional America for satirical purposes, and it brings out the novel's humour. The notes incorporate the most recent Kafka scholarship to elucidate difficult parts of the text.
• A Biographical Preface provides an account of Kafka's life against the context of his time.
• Up-to-date bibliography and chronology of the author.

The Man Who Disappeared

Franz Kafka
Translated and Edited by Ritchie Robertson

Oxford World's Classics

Description

The Man Who Disappeared

Franz Kafka
Translated and Edited by Ritchie Robertson

Oxford World's Classics

Author Information

The Man Who Disappeared

Franz Kafka
Translated and Edited by Ritchie Robertson

Oxford World's Classics

From Our Blog

Innocence and Experience: Childhood in Kafka

By Ritchie Robertson Some of the great modernists have written evocatively about childhood. At first glance, Kafka may not seem to be among them. The minutely detailed recollection of childhood that Proust provides in Swann's Way, or Thomas Mann's account of a school day in the life of young Hanno Buddenbrook, lack counterparts in Kafka. His world-famous and compelling fantasies are about inscrutable authorities, such as the Court and the Castle, and their victims are doomed at worst to inexplicable punishment, at best to frustration. Kafka would seem to deal with experience rather than innocence.

Posted on June 3, 2012

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