The Castle
A man arrives after dark at a snowbound village, gives his name only as K., and says he is the land surveyor the authorities above have engaged, which nobody up there will confirm and nobody will deny. He takes up with Frieda, a barmaid who has been the mistress of an official named Klamm, and spends his days working the village's rules toward a hearing that is always being granted somewhere else. Kafka broke it off mid-sentence in 1922 and left instructions for Max Brod to burn his unpublished papers; Brod printed it two years after his death instead.
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Closest analogues
- 57% · 15 shared
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- 47% · 12 shared
- 46% · 13 shared