Amerika - Franz Kafka - 1972

*Amerika* is Franz Kafka's comic masterpiece. In this entertaining novel he tells the story of Karl Rossman, "a poor boy of sixteen who had been packed off to America by his parents because a servant girl had seduced him and got herself a child by him." In the land of opportunity Karl is expected to redeem his past, but soon encounters a series of dizzy reversals and strange adventures. He falls into the clutches of an improbable assortment of native rogues. Still, the benign influence of a magical America finally reasserts itself in a bizarre "Nature Theatre of Oklahoma." Amerika was written in a period of feverish creativity during which Kafka accomplished much of his finest writing. In the same month that he started the novel, he also wrote, in a single sitting, his amazing story The Judgment; by November he had completed a draft of The Metamorphosis. In Amerika he took obvious delight in the question: What might it feel like to step suddenly off the boat into the wonderland that is the United States? Amerika - Franz Kafka Printed 1972, Schocken Books, New York Softcover. Approx. 5.5x8in. 299pp. Cover shows some dings & wear. Names of a couple previous owners on inside front page (see photo). Otherwise in decent vintage condition.