Amerika

The Man Who Disappeared

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by Franz Kafka,

Translated by Michael Hofmann

New Directions

Due/Published May 2004, 240 pages, paper

ISBN 0811215695

New in paper (S04)

Hofmann's new translation of Kafka's great novel of 1927.

Kafka began the first of his three novels in 1911, but like the others Amerika remained unfinished, and perhaps as Klaus Mann suggested, "necessarily endless." Karl Rossman, the youthful hero of the novel, "a poor boy of sixteen," has been banished by his parents to America, following a scandal. There, with unquenchable optimism, he throws himself into adventure after misadventure after adventure Experiences multiply as he makes his way into the heart of the country.